Like you, I wonder about the summer. I think about the first thing I will do when I can leave my house. I also imagine various futures. Like most people in middle age, I dream about alternative careers. Should I have been a lawyer, a campaign manager, or a restaurateur? Say I woke up one morning and decided to sell high-end Asian? This is admittedly a weird thought. Anyone who has read the news knows better. It's a terrible time to be in food services. Restaurant workers make up a disproportionate number of the unemployed, and the crisis has exposed their vulnerability. Many of our favorite eateries moreover have closed. Especially Chinese . Experts estimate one half of them are gone because of the crisis -- and resurgent xenophobia. But let’s imagine we are now on the other side. Pretend the U.S. economy is in recovery, consumer confidence is high, and people have money for niceties. All big if’s, but still... The scenario was inspired by an actual assignment (Fall 2017). A few years ago, a group of Ross students decided to apply what they learned in class and cook up a business plan. Their stated mission: Set up a high-end dim sum parlor in downtown Ann Arbor. Charge top dollar and figure out what to do about the clientele and their ideas about authenticity . Locate niche. Exploit and become a celebrity. ---------- These questions go straight to the heart of this week's reading. The author, Professor Krishnendu Ray at NYU, captures two challenges facing anyone seeking to break into Asian haute cuisine . The first is no shortage of competition. To quote Jennifer 8. Lee (2008), “There are some forty thousand Chinese restaurants in the United States—more than the number of McDonald’s, Burger Kings, and KFCs c ombined.” The second is market expectations. Chinese food is cheap. Really cheap. In one of the chapters you did not read, Ray analyzed the average price of a Chinese meal in New York City based on Zagat guides. He found that Chinese restaurants sat near the bottom, trailing Vietnamese, Mexican, and Indian. Those businesses did manage to squeak ahead of Thai (though not by much). Meanwhile, Japanese restaurants soared to the top of the pack, followed by French and American. The implications are clear. Americans associate Chinese food with cheap eats. Popularity does not translate into prestige. Now do your own soul searching. When was the last time you were willing to shell out thirty bucks for a plate of chow mein? Can you justify spending a few hundred dollars on a meal of General Tso or Kung Pao chicken? What about sweet-and-sour pork? ---------- Still, there must be a way of making my dream a reality. At this point, there are successful high-end “ethnic restaurants.” In the San Francisco of my dad’s youth, Cecilia Chiang (P.F. Chang’s mommy) started a revolution. Nowadays, food critics rave about Brandon Jew , of Mister Jiu’s with one Michelin star. You have already heard me wax poetic about Charles Phan of the Slanted Door . The East Coast also has its picks. There is Momofuku’s David Chang and Eddie Huang of Baohaus fame (yes, this is the same foul-mouthed guy from Fresh off the Boat ). There are also South Asian superstar chefs, too, including one from Junoon . Things are also changing. Prior to COVID-19, classic Chinese American diners were already closing . Why? The next generation rarely stays in the restaurant business. They become doctors, engineers, business people, lawyers, and professors -- in other words, professionals. New Chinese immigrants moreover don’t need to operate restaurants. They already have money, education, and status. But this is not the only reason why I am optimistic. Ray points out American perceptions of Chinese people are shifting. Over time, "Chinese" will no longer signal poor immigrants in the USA. When Americans hear Chinese, they'll imagine people with power, money, and class. Chinese food will one day be like Japanese. High-class cuisine for professionals . Picture it: thirty bucks for a plate of orange chicken. Not so much. More likely, fine Yunnan goat cheese sauteed in truffle or cured ham. ---------- So what, then, is the secret path to celebrity? A lot depends on your profile. If you are an immigrant, you must fit in with the white establishment and distance yourself from poor newcomers. Look to Cecilia Chiang , who recently celebrated her hundredth birthday. Sixty years ago, she pulled off a miracle. In a time when Chinese was synonymous with poor Cantonese folks, she opened a high-end Chinese restaurant in a nice neighborhood. She wasn’t even a chef. But that didn’t stop her from winning over key food critics or celebrities. It also didn't hurt that she knew how to pair fine French wines with Chinese food. Alice Waters, of Chez Panisse, became a devoted friend. Chiang also knew the power of messaging. Some key takeaways: Take a hard look at the Chinatown menus, and rule out anything on them. In Chiang’s day, this meant excluding the chop suey. These days, the sweet and sour pork would have to go. (Never mind that you can get it at Michelin-starred restaurants in Hong Kong .) Presentation. Your restaurant decor must be clean and elegant, not kitschy. While I would not recommend appearing in your restaurant decked out in furs and diamonds, appearances do matter. All the better, of course, if you are tall, well spoken, and good looking (Chiang was all of these things). Low-end Chinese bakery in SF (April 2011) You’ll also need to convey a sense of glamorous China. Not the China of my Cantonese grandfather (peasant, coolie, Maoist). Get over your woke scruples and invoke rarefied privilege! In Chiang’s day, that was the China of the Nationalist Party. The same corrupt party that was sent packing to Taiwan after the Civil War (1927-1949). Fortunately, your point of reference today is different: Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore. Just make sure it's the China of rich and elegant people. Not the nouveau riche. People who speak in soft tones and eat only refined, light fare. People whose diets almost fit with Gwyneth Paltrow's philosophy of what is right. The name of your restaurant should remind people of that China. Incidentally, Chiang baptized her restaurant "The Mandarin." High-end restaurant (Shaoxing, Nov 2018) ---------- So far, we have pondered the choices for immigrants. Admittedly slim pickings. But what about us American-born or raised types? How do we become great? Our path is different. The fluency in English is an asset. But what's more important is ease with bougie talk and people. Especially if you are like me: the beneficiary of a prestigious liberal arts education. You have also taken ASIAN 258. You can discourse authoritatively about the finer points of not only Asian, but global food history. I have plied you not only with the secrets of making gluten-free dumplings , but many, many hours of cocktail talk. You know how to eat your sushi and offer a Chinese toast. You now have an arsenal of safe topics of disputation: the history of tempura . It’s connection to fish and chips, and the Inquisition. Roman prejudices against oatmeal and beer. The origins of ketchup and bubble tea . You'll connect with clients over dinner and find common ground with strangers. You’ll eventually forget my name, but my face will haunt you as you look into your soup bowl. Boo! ---------- Fitting in is one thing. Making it big is another. Asian American chefs face a double-edged challenge. On the one hand, they are pigeon-holed, “representatives of their culture.” On the other hand, suspicion dogs them. People wonder if they are disingenuous agents. Like non-Asian cooks, charges will fly of inauthenticity (though not appropriation ). Chiang even chided one well-known chef for being “so ABC.” Take Eddie Huang's beef with David Chang. Huang attacks the older man for not being “Asian enough.” This is Chang, the child of Korean immigrants, the same man who has ascended into the culinary pantheon. People call him an outsider because of his race -- even though he went to a culinary academy and mastered French cuisine. School wasn’t optional. Chang badly needed the cultural capital to be a chef rather than a poor immigrant cook. He then ate his way through Japan, “refining” his palate. This set him up for getting the right (powerful white) backers at all of the right times. Note to self: you must seek permission from the culinary establishment to make excellent Asian food. Who cares if they only know French? Huang's not impressed, though. Can you believe that Chang roasts his pork belly? Asians have no use for ovens. Or that he doesn’t know when to use the bun or the pancake. Thank god there is Eddie. He crushed Chang with his steamed buns and proved to the world that the best bao in New York was going to be made by a “Taiwanese kid.” “The way it was supposed to be.” His words, not mine. My attempt to make vindaloo guabao (April 2020) In case you are wondering, Huang’s hitting below the belt. Chang's parents were Korean. The insinuation is that Chang doesn’t have the right genes to pull off the dish. You should be getting flashbacks of the sushi police. Don’t be fooled by Huang's in-your-face tone. It actually hides defensiveness, the need to seek permission. Unlike Chang, Huang’s not a chef-- and what is more, he’s like me. He acts and sounds American. A host of put-downs awaits. If he isn't careful, his food will be dismissed as "bastardized" Asian . So Huang gets ahead of the story. He calls everyone else out, pounds his chests and shouts. “I’m more Asian than you!” ---------- My path to greatness must be different. Unlike Huang, my face is a liability. Besides, I can't stomach calling anyone “fake” Chinese, or fake anything. "Mongrel" is a not just a slur; it's also analytically unhelpful (remember: it's local adaptation , dummy ). For inspiration, I’d look instead to Belinda Leong . A West Coaster who has no time for stunts. Of course, Leong doesn’t pretend to offer the best bao in San Francisco, or even sell Chinese food. She’s a pastry chef and has the credentials, having lived and worked in the right places. This chef also exhibits no shortage of talent and ingenuity. I love her art voraciously (take that, Tartine !). Leong's also independent. She’s largely resisted the pressure to be a ethnic chef. But then I find myself doing what Ray describes -- I want her pastries to reflect her Cantonese background. I feel bad, but I still get excited when she pays homage to our shared roots. She prepares Asian-accented pastries during the Lunar New Year . She also bakes birthday cakes for Cecilia Chiang and tops them off with monkeys, and teams up with Yang Sing, a well-regarded San Francisco dim sum spot, to do celebrations. I was ready to fly home when I read, “ Yank Sing will offer Leong's black sesame kouign amann, white sesame opera cake and a coconut and taro verrine; stop by her shop for a larger selection of treats like a mango coconut gateau, milk tea macarons and more.” Of course, Leong's not promoting the (underappreciated) world of Asian sweets. She’s injecting Cantonese touches into a canonical tradition of French pastry making. The Chinese accents distinguish her from others. But they do not threaten conventional understandings of taste. ---------- But I would go farther than Leong. After all, I have to live with myself (even in fantasy land). We would start off, of course, with European pastries with Asian twists . Durian and ketchup macaron. Ube mousses. Five spiced cookies . Egg custard tarts. Yes, I would use condensed milk! The Portuguese inspiration for danta 蛋塔 As I fattened up my customers, I would initiate them into a new world of desserts. Unfamiliar flavors and textures, novel ways of coordinating tooth and tongue. Mango pudding, molten custard bun with salted duck egg yolk, sticky rice dumpling, shaved ice with taro and tapioca. Then crumbly sesame and peanut halva , pineapple cake, flaky rose pastry , deep-fried durian puff. Durian Fritters (Xiamen, Nov 2019) Before long, customers would crave my curry beef triangles, pork floss buns filled with pastry cream, snow skin mooncakes, gelatinous frog ovums, white fungus soups, and then mooncakes. Yes, the mooncakes Americans sometimes call “an acquired taste.” This is also the mythical pastry that helped eject the Mongols from China . Supposedly. A symbol of Han nationalism, but also an artifact of the Silk Road. In case you're wondering, mooncakes bear more than a family resemblance to ma’amoul . Beijing Pastry Shop (Nov 2019) My goal would not be to force a reckoning with the “real” thing. The story lies in the pastries themselves. Each of them are like me: unapologetic mutts. They're distinctive, of course. But they also testify to the capacity of people to share, copy, and riff off each other. With each bite, your grasp of Asian and authentic becomes shakier. Over time, you'll wonder what ethnic means. You'll also become convinced that food shouldn't lead to stereotypes. There are, in fact, ovens in Asia. And adversaries shape each other's world of taste . But absolutely no, no culinary essences . By then, I would have achieved my objective. We should never have been eating "ethnic" in the first place. Sources: Freedman, Paul. Ten Restaurants that Changed America ( Liveright, 2016). Lee, Jennifer 8. The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food. (Grand Central Publishing, 2008). Ray, Krishnendu. The Ethnic Restaurateur ( Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015). ____"Cultural Politics of Taste." Powerpoint Presentation. (February 2020) Wang, Wayne. Soul of a Banquet (2004). https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3459090/ Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. https://thecuriouseater.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page

Twenty years ago, I found myself in China during the Mid-Autumn Festival, living a stone's throw from the Forbidden Palace. The holiday was particularly memorable. Someone had gifted me a big box of assorted mooncakes, made in Taiwan. These pastries were different from the standard lotus root and bean paste varieties I grew up eating in my Cantonese family. The Taiwanese fillings were full of fruity, creamy flavors: matcha, taro, pineapple, candied melon. A veritable mooncake revelation! The mooncake continues to be reimagined. In more recent years, the snowskin variety has supplanted the classic mooncake in many households. The reasons are not hard to guess: the newcomers are lighter and healthier. They are also a little chewy: think of a cross between the purple sweet potato balls and mochi. Plus they are easy to make and can be filled with virtually anything: custard , chocolate ganache, taro root, and even purple sweet potato puree. Readers already familiar with my blog will notice one ingredient that seems out of place in Chinese cuisine: milk. Now that my daughter is old enough to appreciate the Chinese holidays, I have been experimenting with different recipes. Stay tuned for the results of my other experiments. Filling (adapted from SideChef ) Purple sweet potato, 1 pound Butter, ghee, or oil, 2 tablespoons Glutinous rice flour, 1 tablespoon (optional) Milk ¼ cup Sugar, ¼ cup (or to taste) Salt, a pinch Mooncake “skin” (adapted from RedHouse Spic e) Glutinous rice flour, 9 tablespoons (I use Thai glutinous rice flour, which has a finer texture than Japanese mochiko, but the latter will work too) Rice flour, 9 tablespoons Powdered sugar, 9 tablespoons Wheat starch (or cornstarch), 6 tablespoons Milk, 1.5 cup Vegetable oil, 3 tablespoons Condensed milk, 3 tablespoons (optional, for richer flavor) Potato starch, for dusting (or substitute cornstarch or toasted glutinous rice flour) Equipment: Steamer, Instant Pot, or microwave spatula food processor for sweet potato puree (unnecessary for other fillings) mooncake stamping mold Methods: Start by mixing the dry ingredients for the skin, then add the milk(s) and oil. Whisk to incorporate thoroughly. Some recipes insist on pouring the ingredients through a sieve. (I found it made no difference.) Pour into a heat-proof container like a Pyrex measuring glass and steam the “skin” batter for 25 minutes. The batter will solidify like mochi. Remove from the steamer as soon as it is safe to handle and place the dough on a clean (undusted) surface. Knead the dough for several minutes until it becomes a smooth and shiny ball. If you don’t have cooking gloves, use a plastic spatula to manipulate the skin. Wrap tightly in saran wrap and chill in the refrigerator for at least half an hour. It is best to leave it for an hour or two, but do not go beyond 4 hours. (Shortcut: if you don’t want to bother with steaming the dough, you can put the batter in the microwave with a lid. Heat on high for 1 minute, then remove from microwave and give it a good stir. Return to the microwave for another 30 seconds and stir. If the dough is set, you can remove it and then knead it. Otherwise, heat for another 10-15 seconds. The dough may be a little harder than what you get from putting it in the steamer, but it will be serviceable. Wash, peel, and cut the sweet potatoes into cubes, and steam for 20 minutes. After the sweet potatoes are soft enough to be mashed with a fork, put them in a food processor (this is necessary for creating a smooth paste without coarse fibers). Add all of the dry ingredients except for the rice flour. Then fold in the milk and fats. At this point, you can decide to incorporate the rice flour to make the paste stiffer. If the paste is sufficiently solid, skip this step. If not, cook the paste. Using a non-stick pan on medium low, heat the paste and stir for about 10 minutes. The paste will thicken. Refrigerate the paste until stiff (chilled overnight works fine). Scoop about 2 tablespoons of the paste and roll into small balls. Stop when you have rolled all of the balls and store in the refrigerator until ready to use. Remove the “skin” from the refrigerator and divide into 21 -24 pieces. Roll the pieces into balls with the palm of your hands, and then flatten them gently into a round disc as if you were making dumpling skins. The discs should not be thin: you just want them big enough to cover the paste ball filling (see picture above). Place one of the paste balls in the center of the skin, then bring the ends together, pinching to hide the purple centers. Roll in the palms of your hands and place the ball seam-side down. Dust the top with a little potato starch (or cornstarch). Insert the mooncake stamp in the press and dust with starch. Place the stamp over the ball and press down to stamp the ball, then release. Consume the mooncakes fresh. For chocolate mooncakes: Add 1/2 teaspoon of unsweetened cocoa powder to the "skin" batter. Use cocoa powder instead of starch to dust the molds and mooncakes. For the ganache filling: Heavy whipping cream, 1 cup Semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate, 9-10 ounces, chopped into small pieces. Butter, 2 tablespoons (optional) 1. Heat the cream over medium low until it simmers (do not allow the cream to boil, otherwise it will scorch the chocolate, creating a greasy mixture). 2. Add the cream to the butter and chocolate mixture. 3. Allow the ganache to stiffen at room temperature. Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. https://thecuriouseater.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page

Shellfish in Xiamen (SE China, Nov 2019) Ever wonder why Asians put tapioca pearls in milk tea? The origins of sushi, tempura, or ramen? Or whether it’s disrespectful to Chinese people to order Orange Chicken? If so, you’re in the right place. Welcome to ASIAN 258. If this were a regular semester, I would be congratulating you on making it into the class. After all, most of you are seniors; some of you have even been waiting years to take this introductory course. But to quote President Schlissel, this year is like no other. So I’ll skip the congratulations and cut to the chase. You won’t be watching a middle-aged woman deliver a PowerPoint twice a week or clicking for points with friends. Nor will you have an opportunity to crowd into a kitchen with me and the other member of the teaching team. Instead, we will have a different relationship, a virtual one. But never fear. I will spare you the looong pre-recorded lectures. Instead, I am going to reach you – much like a wellness guru – through the power of the written word. My blog: yes, the blog, delivered to your Inbox, for the rest of the term. If you want our relationship to continue indefinitely, you’ll have an option to subscribe to the blog at no additional cost. Of course, this class will entail far more than Miranda Brown’s blog. Starting Wednesday, May 5th, you’ll go to section in real time and meet me and your GSI. You’ll play games, explore recipes, compete for bonus points, and make friends. In the process, you’ll come away with a deeper understanding of Asian food. There will also be experiential activities this term. You'll also have a chance to cook Asian recipes with me and the Teaching Team -- on-line, of course. Some highlights: noodles, biryani, mochi, sushi, and, of course, pad Thai. Uighur Naan in Zhangzhou, SE China (Nov 2019) Most of these will be in real time, to give you a chance to interact with the class informally, but there will be also some experiments that you can pursue on your own time, offline. There will also be assignments. My assignments will be enticing invitations to learn. As such, they will be fun, engaging, creative, even a little crazy. You will have opportunities to reflect on how my blogs, your discussion sections, and readings relate to your daily life. These assignments will assume a myriad of forms – and you’ll have choice as to where you put your effort. This is why we use GradeCraft: a software that allows you to tailor your course work to your interests and schedules. This term, you will have opportunities to post and respond in YellowDig, to blog about your meals, and reflect on your efforts to cook or master banquet etiquette. There will also be an opportunity to create your own Food-for-Thought Manifesto. All of these activities will assist your journey through the world of Asian food. By the end of the term, you’ll have unraveled one of life’s great mysteries. That is, why is Asian food so darn yummy? In other words, this is not just another class. ASIAN 258 will change your life and haunt you for the rest of your days. After this term, you will never look at your food in the same way again, Asian or not. You’ll also have learned about a lot of food: food that you have never heard of, or tried. In the process, you’ll open up your palate, and hopefully, learn a few life skills about cooking and eating. Along the way, you will pick up a tremendous amount of knowledge about Asian culture and history – but in delectable bite-sized morsels and by watching plenty of the world’s funniest cooking videos. How's this relevant? You'll see... More practically, this class promises to help you become your best self. By best, I mean, your most polished and engaging self. Your assignments for the class will challenge you not only to demonstrate your mastery of Miranda Brown Thought, but also show that you can throw together a compelling and provocative argument: equal parts learned and titillating. This class also offers a crash course in acquiring social and cultural capital. As you head off into your post-graduate life, you will discover the importance of relationships, and I mean not just romantic ones: colleagues, bosses, and clients. As you all know, it can be tough connecting with strangers. Most often, we don’t know exactly where to begin. Do you really want to ask a new client how he or she feels about the presidential election? Or about abortion, mask wearing, football? Obviously not. Even football is full of landmines. Food is different, however. You can always count on it. As one savvy Ross student told me in the first iteration of this class in 2015, “Food is the safest way to connect with someone.” We all eat. And when we come together for a meal, we have in front of us a subject of common concern. That food will present you with an opportunity to demonstrate your smarts and cosmopolitan creds. In other words, you will come away from this class with a lot of cocktail talk. Having introduced the broad goals of this class, let me answer a question that you must be burning to ask. Who am I? I am Miranda Brown , the wearer of many hats. Officially, I am the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and Professor of Chinese Studies in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Michigan. I have managed to hold down this job, albeit at various ranks, since September 2002. For the purposes of this term, you just need to know three things. One: I am obsessed with food, and you are welcome to talk with me about any food or drink, anytime. Two: I am also the mommy of domineering five-year old Sofía, who will invade our food labs. Three, I am half Chinese, but one hundred percent Californian. This last fact will acquire increasing relevance as this course progresses. My mixed parentage drives the way I see food. And if I were to ever write my own manifesto, it would be that good food is rarely pure (more on that later). Miranda Brown This term, I am not alone. The ASIAN 258 Teaching Team includes a high-powered GSI. Gou Wu (pronounced like the verb go)—who also goes by "Alexis" in English-speaking contexts, so pick whichever one you like!—is currently a master's student in the International and Regional Studies program (specializing in Chinese studies) after having majored in linguistics at UChicago. Alexis's specific research interests include historical linguistics, dialectology, and language contact, and you may soon be surprised to learn how these concepts will turn out quite relevant to the subjects of this class, too. Becoming a GSI for ASIAN 258 marks the first time Alexis's food-geek side and academic pursuits ever get to actually overlap, and this avid home cook (who has been one since high school) is still finding it a little bit surreal. As this blog has gone on too long, we’ll stop here. I’ll lay out the major problems in studying Asian Food in our next blog, and highlight a pressing controversy: is it kosher to reduce the sugar or eliminate the nuts in recipes? In the meantime, please scan the syllabus and explore our Canvas site. Have questions about course logistics? Go to the YellowDig Assignment in Canvas, click on it to register, and start posting your questions. I’ll be waiting. Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. https://thecuriouseater.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page

January 6, 2021 was supposed to be another gloomy morning in Ann Arbor. At about 9 am, I awoke, still groggy from a night of wrestling Sofía to sleep. I crept downstairs to the kitchen and started the coffee. As I waited for the caffeine to coarse through my veins and vivify my brain, I reached for my phone and scanned Twitter. That morning, something had caught my attention. It was not the images of crowds breaching the Capitol. That would not happen for another four hours. It was something more mundane: an uncharacteristically sharp comment from a food scholar who I admire. “God this is awful,” he wrote. I did a double take. Had I misread the line in a stupor? No, I had it right and proceeded to click on the thread. Within minutes, I had secured my spot in the chorus. What on earth had set us off? Apparently, it was an essay, “ A Kitchen Resolution Worth Making; Follow the Recipe Exactly ,” published two days before by Genevieve Ko , New York Times food writer. Last month, she had successfully replicated a dish by the decolonial food anthropologist and feminist chef, Claudia Serrato : Carne con chili rojo (meat with red chilis). While preparing this Mexican staple, Ko had found herself, a professionally trained chef, tested. She had been tempted to switch out chicken stock for the vegetable broth and raise the oven temperature. But she resisted and followed “the instructions to the letter.” Ko wants us to know this would be her new way of doing things going forward. Her New Year’s resolution was motivated by more than a desire for superb food, though she was not disappointed. “It was one of the best dishes I prepared all year”: “a chunk roast braised tender,” one that “collapsed under my fork, readily shredding into fine threads to soak up flame-red sauce fruity and hot with dried chilis.” Instead, Ko had pulled off something else. She had transcended the limitations of being “an armchair traveler or restaurant diner.” She had become an “active participant,” one that challenged her culinary framework and kept her moving “towards a more expansive and equitable worldview.” This led her to realize that she could suspend “her own assumptions, culinary and otherwise,” excise “unconscious bias,” and embraced another person's—Claudia Serrato’s – “background and culture.” Sticking to the recipe, in other words, had made Ko a better person. I was moved reading Ko’s words. And I repeated to myself. She had overcome the urge to reduce the sugar. I was so moved that I got out my bakeware and started preparing my daughter’s vegan peanut butter cookies, following the recipes to the T. At the last moment, however, my wayward tendencies overtook me. I added milk to the vegan recipe and reduced the amount of sugar, substituting molasses. This predictably threw off the proportions of dry and wet, so I found myself adding more and more whole wheat flour. The color of the peanut butter cookie was now the wrong hue. Having gone so far down this road, I decided to see the experiment all the way through. I ditched the fork used to imprint the cookies and reached for the mooncake mold stashed in the drawer, and punctured every one of my peanut butter monstrosities with the mold. Twelve times and then posted my act of defiance on Twitter. Not quite what the author of the recipe intended... So why didn’t I just listen to Ko? After all, she has a job that I would kill for. She writes for the New York Times for a living and works with top trade presses, testing recipes. She has trained with the very finest chefs in the world, and even attended Yale. I imagine her kitchen is nicer than mine. I also have zero problem with sticking to recipes. I often do it, especially when I am trying to figure out what something is. Indeed, I have discovered that some baked goods – the French macaron shell, for example – don’t tolerate improvisation. I also dream nightly about the food as it tastes in Asia. There are even days where I strive to recreate the precise textures and flavors of a specific place for my family. Miranda's Vanilla Macarons (ca. 2011) So why was I roused? I have seen one version of this controvers y after another. It is now everywhere, even now: in a time when a record number of restaurants have failed, restaurant workers have struggled, meat packers are dying, and when 28% of households with children are food insecure . This argument asserts itself everywhere in discussions about Asian food, and it haunts our ability to enjoy our Philadelphia Rolls out in the open. You’ll see. This is a controversy also where people argue about who has the right to make – and ultimately change – not only “Asian food,” but all ethnic cuisine. Combatants insist that if the dish isn’t exactly like it is in Asia, we shouldn’t presume to call it Asian – especially if you aren’t from that part of Asia. Say Asian inspired. 2019 saw a myriad of these controversies. Gordon Ramsay got heat for opening an uninspiring Chinese restaurant in London with tacky décor. Arielle and Lee Haspel found themselves in hot water for their gluten-free and tone-deaf rendition of classic Chinese American takeout. Most recently, a few cooks in Chicago have gotten rough– on Instagram. Top Chef and Michigan alumnus Stephanie Izard made the mistake of preparing grilled beef with cilantro and mint , and had the gall to refer to it as bibimbap. The move enraged Won Kim , a fellow chef in Chicago. How dare she fail to properly “contextualize” her actions in her Instagram post? Her critics charge that she should be clear that her dish wasn’t really Korean. She should have found a different word. (By the way, when did Insta become the place for academic dissertations?) But Izard was guilty of far more than misspeaking. No one used the word, but commentators could see the federal case taking shape. Izard had committed cultural appropriation. What is cultural appropriation? The BBC defines it inelegantly in the following way: “[W]hen a tradition, such as clothing or a hairstyle, is taken from a culture and used in a different way. It can offend people when people do this without making it clear where the traditions come from, or when they don't acknowledge how important they are to certain cultures. This can make some people feel as if their culture is not being respected.” Other people tack on conditions , to differentiate cultural appropriation from mere cultural borrowing. Cultural appropriation involves power. The appropriator is usually a member of a dominant group. There may be a financial dimension, or profiteering. Take Izard. As a member of a dominant group, she had taken someone else’s food and profited, scoring coveted spots where she sold tacos and opening “reasonably authentic” Asian restaurants like Duck Duck Goat . For Kim, the episode drove home the deep inequalities in the food world. Not only do minority chefs lack the opportunities afforded by their white counterparts in America, but they must watch as those counterparts misrepresent, or even desecrate, their cuisine. By pairing the beef with the wrong plants, Izard had mangled the recipe for bibimpap – and Korean culture -- beyond recognition. To be sure, I agree with Kim, to a point. I would like to see more opportunities for non-white cooks. I also want Asian food to get the recognition it deserves (wouldn’t it be cool, for example, if the French Laundry hired a Sichuanese chef to make hot pot?). But is it a crime in itself to alter, or even mangle, a recipe? Or consider the flip side of the equation. Is it politically virtuous to hew to the recipe? This class will make a case for mangled recipes: not that is either right or wrong, or that it leads to good or bad tasting food. Instead, I will argue that there really isn’t anything aberrant about mangling, mislabeling, or appropriating a recipe from a different culture. It's been happening for thousands of years. Our class will thus explore the vast world of mangled recipes. Some of them will entice you. Picture the egg custard tarts at dim sum. If you have ever traveled to Lisbon, you’ll realize that this staple of my childhood was not a carbon copy of its Portuguese ancestor. Probably a poor imitation of the splendid original. Pastéis de Nata (Lisbon, Dec 2010). Others, however, may repel you: my daughter’s version of shortbread (yes, that’s a lot of blue food coloring). You can decide for yourself whether you are ready to dish out a lot of dough for gold dusted har gow with truffle (click on the link if you dare) . Har gow 蝦餃 (crystal skin shrimp dumplings) As we will see, the line between a proper culinary homage and mangling is murky. Cooks of the past had few qualms about substituting ingredients or sources of heat. I wish I could say that food fusions arose in the past mostly from people coming together in amorous connections, respectful exchanges, or trade. But food history is pure Hollywood: gore and opportunism. At the end of the day, I hope you’ll mangle a few recipes. I have done my share. Check out my very first attempt at making dumplings from scratch (2014). Yes, I know, it looks like an empanada. My cousin, who owns a Chinese takeout restaurant, said as much. The good news is that I have gotten better. Despite my progress, I still feel no compunction to stick to any recipe. Like my Cantonese ancestors, who found themselves cooking Chinese in tropical Malaya, I improvise. I’ve made a habit of adding turmeric to the dough for color and a punchier flavor: so far, no complaints, even from Sofi. How it started... How it's going... Have thoughts about culinary or cultural appropriation? Questions about the use of terms: some of pics and the links? Tales of your attempts to make recipes that ended in inglorious defeat or heavenly pleasure? You know what to do: go to Yellow Dig (after you have clicked on the Assignment) and find your inner food pundit. Next week, we’ll have a chance to spar more, when we get to the Great Noodle Debate. Stay tuned. Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. https://thecuriouseater.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page

A picture of noodles on a plate in Canton My first encounter with food history was in the sixth grade. One evening, my father came home to tell us over dinner that he had served as a judge in a cooking case. A local group had invited him, San Francisco’s Public Defender, to adjudicate a longstanding controversy: Who invented pasta, the Chinese or Italians? At the time, I did not grasp the import of the question. I was also unfamiliar with the story of Marco Polo bringing pasta back to Italy from China. I didn't even know who Marco Polo was. On that day, I was mostly interested in my mother’s reaction. “Of course it was the Chinese,” she scoffed. “The Europeans steal everything.” My father shook his head and laughed. Apparently, the Italian and Chinese communities had sent representatives to attend the event. My father naturally thought it best to find a diplomatic solution -- and dodged the question. “I said that both groups came up with pasta on their own,” he told me. “Besides, how would you ever know the difference?” ----- I have periodically thought about this debate over the last thirty-six years. It has been a story I tell people about my late mother, or about the dynamics of growing up in a bicultural household. In recent years, though, I have pondered the conversation as a scholar. It touches upon many of the issues we discussed last time. What makes something a particular dish? Is it the ingredients, a specific process, or a well-defined recipe? As you all know, these questions are not just philosophical ones or points of academic disputation. The practice of naming is caught up with issues of cultural ownership. And it points back to my parents’ argument about who should get credit for pasta. ----- Before giving my opinion, let’s back up: What do I mean by noodle or pasta (I use both terms interchangeably). Rather than give you an overly broad definition, let me start with a recipe for the classic noodle. Take wheat and grind it into a fine flour. Then drizzle water into that flour, to turn the grains into a stiff ball. Now knead. After a few minutes, wrap the dough in a damp cloth and set it aside (saran wrap is fine). Wait about twenty or thirty minutes. As you wait, the gluten -- or what the ancient Chinese called the “tendons” or “sinews” -- will relax and endow your dough with its special powers. Knead the soft ball a few more minutes. Now take out your rolling pin and flatten that ball into a thick disc. In some traditions of pasta making, you’ll cut the dough into strips, brush them with oil, and then set them out again to sit. After two hours, it will be time to stretch those babies. Grab two ends of the strip with your hands and then pull, and bounce the noodle off the top of the counter. Bam bam bing! The noodles are ready for prime time: heat your water to a boil, drop the strips in, and wait a moment. Voila, you have noodle! The basic concept behind the noodle is simple. It’s so simple, in fact, that many people argue that the noodle must have been invented independently multiple times over the course of human history. Until a few years ago, I would have agreed. But I began having second thoughts after a trip to Mexico City in 2011 to meet the future in-laws. While there, I had a taste of something that made me do a double take. It was sopa de fideos: an intense tomato-based soup with short strands of wheat vermicelli. After a little digging, I discovered that fideo had a long history. It goes back to Spain: Sephardic Jews brought them to Spain from the Near East during the many centuries of Muslim rule in the Iberian peninsula (ca. 8th-15th centuries). A picture of a mosque converted into a Catholic church in Cordoba, Spain. Oddly enough, no one has claimed that this little noodle came from Italy. This last fact surprised me. After all, Spain is a lot closer to Italy than the Near East. Besides, I had assumed that the Italians had been making noodles since time immemorial. But I soon was disabused of this notion. According to Silvio Serventi and Françoise Sabban, noodle making represents a fairly *recent* development. Italians -- or Sicilians to be precise -- only became well known for their pasta in the twelfth or thirteenth century. Before that time, they were mostly bread eaters. For thousand of years, people in this part of the world have loved their bread: not just yeasted things that puff up in ovens, but flatbreads that you can throw on the grill or lovingly place in a tandoor. In this, people in the Mediterranean were like the Egyptian pharaohs and the Hebrews. To explain why Italy -- and ultimately, Europe -- was so late to the pasta game, Serventi and Sabban point to religious beliefs and social attitudes. For convenience, I will call these the cultural matrix . The cultural matrix is what determines which foods are valued and how they are prepared. It is also the way foods are classified -- in other words, how they are lumped together or split apart. And the cultural matrix captures the social context of eating: who eats what, with whom, and why. In the Roman world, the cultural matrix worked against the invention of pasta. According to Serventi and Sabban, the ancient Romans and their neighbors split up grains according to their sources of heat: dry (baking) versus moist (boiling, steaming). The former, exemplified by bread, was civilized fare. A proper Roman ate his bread with cheese and drank his wine. By contrast, the barbarian -- typified by my proto-German and English forebears -- ate porridge and guzzled beer. This distinction apparently stuck around for centuries, only losing its grip in the eighth or ninth century AD. As I read more, I became increasingly interested in the origins of fideos and pasta products. So I did what any China historian would do. I looked at China. China was not a bad place to look. In 2002, archaeologists dug up what looked to be like the first evidence of pasta making in Lajia, China. The site, located in the far northwestern province of Qinghai, was about 4,000 years old. Chemical analysis subsequently suggested that the noodles were made *not* with wheat but rather with millet -- a yellow grain that looks like bird seed. Now marketed in the United States as a super grain, millet was once the staple of the ancient northern Chinese diet. In fact, the dawn of Chinese civilization ten thousand years ago came on the heels of millet farming in the Yellow River Valley. From the looks of things, this discovery seemed like an open and shut case. The Chinese came up with the idea of pasta and developed it with a quintessentially Chinese grain. Score for Team China! But there were problems with the story. Archaeologists can be worse than lawyers. They are sticklers about evidence -- and in particular about the way evidence is handled. Some of them, including the very distinguished Professor Liu Li of Stanford, started poking holes in the theory. She and her team not only pointed to signs of possible site contamination, but more importantly, she questioned whether it was possible to make noodles only from millet. Millet, she pointed out, is gluten free. It lacks the gluey powers of wheat. It thus cannot become a stretchy dough by its lonesome. Inspired, I did my own experiment. Instead of a smooth ball, I ended up with all grit and no stick! An image of millet pearls in plastic wrap. An image of millet + water in a mixing bowl = all grit and no stick! Professor Liu also argued that the Lajia noodles probably once contained wheat. Her suggestion, of course, makes sense. The Lajia site is not just anywhere in China. If you look at the spot on a map, it sits on a track of land that connected the Chinese heartland in the Yellow River Valley to Central Asia and beyond. In other words, Lajia stood at the crossroads of civilizations. It was at a place in ancient times where different peoples mixed, and where disparate food traditions and technologies met, and sometimes collided. This, not coincidentally, would also turn out to be an important spot on the Silk Road, the trade route that would connect China to the West from the first century BC to the eighteenth. It was in this area that China, in fact, acquired its taste for wheat. Wheat came with other things that traveled through Central Asia: the chariot, the tandoor, the rotary grindstone, flatbreads, grape wine, sesame seeds, hops, and cheese (more on that next time). A Ming-dynasty picture of wine making (left) It would take many centuries, however, before wheat products became popular in central China. The reasons may have been economic. By the middle of the Stone Age, millet was already an established crop and thus a safe bet for farmers. Farmers don’t like to do things that risk starvation. But according to food historian Rachel Laudan, the arrival of the rotary grindstone in China from the West, in the third century BC, was a game changer. It mechanized the process of producing flour, turning it into less of a workout. Within a few centuries of the arrival of the rotary grindstone, the Chinese developed an enduring passion for wheat products. Their poets wrote poems -- yes, poems -- about string-like pasta and stretchy noodles, as well as steamed buns. More than one Chinese ruler also became addicted to grilled flatbreads and baked cakes. Indeed, I suspect that grilled bread is a distant relative of the noodle. The ancient Chinese lumped the two together. They called them both bing 餅, a term that they used loosely for doughy things and foods shaped like discs. Grilled and baked breads were Hubing 胡餅, or Barbarian Cakes. Noodles were Soup Cakes. The common name makes sense when you consider the recipe. To see this, let’s pretend we are making a scallion pancake: Take hot water and pour it into the flour to relax some of that gluten. Then roll it up into a ball, flatten it into a disc ( bing ). Then coat the surface with sesame oil, salt, and scallions, and roll like a cigar. Then roll the cigar into a coil, and flatten it back into a disc. That disc will go into an oiled pan. A number of you noticed that the process was similar to the techniques used to produce South Asian paratha . Both belong to the same class of flaky dough pastries. The real surprise is this: Making an archaic Chinese noodle wasn’t all that different. You just lengthen the resting period and instead cut the disc into strips, which you can roll or stretch. The biggest difference, however, is the source of heat: dry versus moist. It turns out that someone had changed up -- even mangled -- the recipe. We do not know the identity of that cook. But Serventi and Sabban believe that they were from China. That person, I would further guess, was also probably a millet eater most of the time, as wheat was a specialty food with foreign associations. So why suspect a millet eater? It comes down to the source of heat. Since ancient times, people in China have most often eaten millet in the form of porridge. Unlike the ancient Italians, the Chinese saw nothing strange about boiling or steaming their grains. Their cultural matrix was different. In it, wet heat was the default setting. Grilling and baking marked a food as something exotic and foreign. A snapshot of rice porridge from Xiamen, China. ----- So far, we have talked about how intercultural borrowing, foreign technology, and recipe mangling contributed to the Chinese noodle. But this leaves the elephant in the room. Did Europeans get the idea of noodles from China? And what about that bowl of sopa de fideos ? If you ask Serventi and Sabban, they’ll tell you European noodles are unrelated. They believe that Sicilians came up with the idea on their own -- during a period of Muslim contact and rule. By the eighth century, Sicilians began experimenting with strips of unleavened dough which they boiled and fried. At some point, they began to bake those boiled strips in layers. Out of this experiment, modern lasagna was born. I suspect that something else happened. Here are *my* interpretations of the facts (yes, I agree with Mom, up to a point). Go back now to that sopa de fideos , the dish that no one wants to label Italian. He doesn’t make fideos by boiling the noodles. He first sautés the strands with oil (dry heat). Only after they turn brown does he add modest amounts of tomato liquid. The result is something more than a soup. It’s a stew. If you’re familiar with pilaf or paella making, the process should ring a bell. In fact, the Spanish also stick vermicelli in their paella, and sometimes make pilaf with it. They treat the vermicelli like rice: pan-fry it first in oil, then add liquid. An image of paella from Madrid, Spain. The Spanish are not alone in treating their vermicelli this way. As I mentioned at the onset, Spain and Portugal were under Muslim rule for several centuries. It thus makes sense that you find commonalities between its cuisines and foods found throughout the Islamic world. In fact, this way of preparing noodles is common in the Islamic world: in Turkey , Lebanon , Iran , and throughout Central Asia . As a Turkish friend told me, “We don’t make our vermicelli like the Italians. And we often take our noodles with rice in pilaf.” So what happened? I suspect that noodle pilaf resulted from a cook -- probably in Central Asia or Iran -- switching out the source of heat. Today, noodles are common foods in Eastern Central Asia. Go to Uzbekistan and you’ll find noodles that look very much like they do in Western China. They’re called Laghman, a word that derives from the Chinese lamian 拉麵 (pulled noodle), and they are boiled creatures. But in Central Asia, you’ll also notice something interesting. The noodles turn up in pilaf. Sometimes, they replace the rice. Other times, however, the noodles serve as garnishes on top of rice. A picture of Uighur Laghman taken by Dr. David Dettmann. The reasons for such a change should be obvious. In Central Asia and the Middle East, pilaf is king. At some point in the past, cooks began to prepare their noodles like long-grained rice. They toasted it in a pan and then let it steam with the juices. In other words, like their ancient Chinese counterparts, these cooks took an unfamiliar food and assimilated that food to their cultural matrix. I would be *surprised* if this way of preparing noodles reached Spain but skipped Italy. Sicily also saw centuries of Muslim rule (ca. 827-1091). Besides, there is a noodle stew called fidelini in Liguria, on the Italian peninsula. Serventi and Sabban believe it is a relative of the Mexican fideos . It too is cooked first in dry heat. The real question is when the Italians began boiling their pasta. This is a question that I can’t answer. I suspect that at some point, some medieval chef started goofing off in the kitchen and realized that thick noodles cook faster in water or broth. Who knows? One thing is for sure. Pasta is a *complicated* food. To be sure, it reflects humans' capacity to learn from each other . If we step back and think about it, it’s truly impressive that equipment like the rotary grindstone and the oven traveled from the Western hemisphere to Asia. It’s also equally unbelievable when we think about how far grains and other foods (like apples) have moved across the globe. Pasta also tells us something else: the human penchant for going off script. Ancient cooks thought little about changing or mangling the recipe. They were also sometimes intellectually lazy and did not strive to preserve the belief systems that motivated other peoples' recipes. In other words, these ancient cooks did not subscribe to Genevieve Ko’s way of thinking. They were opportunistic borrowers. What do you think? Let us know how you like the links and videos. Where do you think your favorite noodles come from? Questions? English-language Sources Paul D. Buell, E.N. Anderson, Montserrat de Pablo Moya, Moldir Okenbay, Crossroads of Cuisine: The Eurasian Heartland, the Silk Road and Food David R. Knechtges, “ Dietary Habits: Shu Xi’s ‘Rhapsody on Pasta ’” In Wendy Swartz, Robert Ford Campany, Yang Lu and Jessey Choo eds. Early Medieval China : A Sourcebook (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014). Rachel Laudan, Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013); Chapter 1-2. -----. "Fideos and Fideu: More on the Mexican Islamic Connection." Robert Spengler, Fruit from the Sands: The Silk Road Origins of the Foods We Eat (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2019). Silvano Serventi and Françoise Sabban, Pasta: The Universal Food , tr. Antony Shugaar (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002). UM-library ebook. Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. https://thecuriouseater.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page

The idea for this blog goes back a ways. Five summers ago, I was sitting at a table with Yang Yong, a visiting student from China. We were doing what scholars usually do: acting like gluttons for punishment. So we decided to translate a group of medical manuscripts, discovered in a tomb from ancient Northwest China (first century AD). Each day, we sat at my desk on the fifth floor of Thayer and put our endurance to the test. Character by character, we transcribed the Chinese from the pictures of ancient wood slips. And then, in one moment, when I least expected it, I discovered something interesting. It came in the form of two characters brushed on the top of strip 87A. I had to squint. But I saw the two characters right: camel + butter. “What the heck, is that camel butter?” I asked. Yang looked perplexed too. “Can you make butter from camels?” Yang responded with a shrug. To see if this was even within the realm of possibility, we first looked at the pictures of the site. Being weak at geography, I had to check Google Maps. I noticed that the site was located near Wuwei City, Gansu, almost two hundred miles north of the place where archaeologists had found the ancient noodles . It was smack on the eastern end of the old Silk Road. Pictures of desert caravans popped into our heads. We imagined pastoral peoples, the ancestors of Mongolian and Tibetan herders with their sheep; Central Asian merchants, speaking tongues distantly related to modern Hindi and Persian; and the Buddhist monk or two. We also visualized Chinese generals, clad in armor. It was the trailer of Dragon Blade (2015): Jackie Chan, Adrien Brody acting as a Roman legionnaire, lots of dust, gore, and camels. (Our vision of the place perhaps contained fewer historical bloopers). But camel butter? None of us knew what that was. Though humanists, we were aware that camels were mammals, and that mammals produced milk. But we had never heard of camel milk, so we googled it. Apparently, camel milk is a thing. Kim Kardashian is a fan. Of course, it is a superfood that *only* sets you back a hundred dollars. There was, however, one hitch. Camel milk may be for the rich in the United States, but it is not a very rich drink. It is actually low in fat, which is why Hollywood stars love it. But without fat, it’s impossible to get butter. My attention, though, was piqued. The question of camel milk got the creative juices flowing. I wondered: Did people in ancient China actually drink milk, or was the camel milk just for the foreigners? I promised myself I would check as soon as the translation was finished. But those questions took on greater urgency some months later. That December, Sofi emerged from the womb. From that moment on, she demanded a bottle every 45 minutes. As she quickly worked her way up from the 67th percentile in weight to the fifth, milk dominated my every thought. In those early morning feedings, I found myself coming back to the problem. Asians + milk? I was confused, because there was this thing called lactose intolerance. In college, I had even taken a multiple choice test about it. As I dimly remembered, it was a condition, one that afflicted more than half the world. Lactose intolerance made it unpleasant, if not dangerous, for people to consume milk. I pictured cramps and runs. According to popular versions of the theory, lactose intolerance is genetic. It’s supposedly most common in Asia, where people are often born without the mutations that allow them to digest fresh milk after they are weaned. The mutations control whether grownups produce the lactase enzyme, which breaks down the lactose or complex sugars in milk. If you lack the mutation, the theory further holds, you can still have dairy, but you need to be careful. Avoid tall glasses of milk and ice cream, and stick to yogurt and cheese. Those foods apparently are ok because the lactose has been reduced, or packed with good gut bacteria that eat the pesky milk sugars. At that point, these ideas (which I have since abandoned) informed my views of milk in Asia. I had also read that lactose intolerance was the reason why you find little milk in the "traditional" Asian diet. ----- But do genetics prevent Asians from consuming dairy? Lactose intolerance is real. So are milk allergies. But the idea that a whole race of people avoids a whole class of food because of genetics? Come on. There’s plenty of dairy in Asia. All kinds of dairy. Just read the recipes! Take India. Some studies estimate rates of lactose intolerance to be as high as 75%. But India is the world’s top milk producing country (followed by the United States and China). More importantly, India is a paradise for dairy lovers. There is not only a lot of milk, but milk in forms that many Americans have never encountered: aromatic yogurt drinks like lassi, soft non-melting cheeses like paneer and chenna, chewy milk fudges and cakes , and the ubiquitous rice pudding. Almond Barfi (food & picture courtesy of Asha) Rajbhog or bengalli rasgolla (Asha) Rajbhog with nut filling exposed (Asha) Carrot or Gajar Barfi (Asha) Kalakand (Asha) Paneer Sabzi Made in Food Lab (ASIAN 258, Jan 2020) Kheer a la Brownie (Jan 24, 2021) For rice pudding: Start by heating clarified butter (ghee) in a pan, then add a few tablespoons of long grained rice. Quickly sauté the rice, then pour in the milk, about a third of a gallon. Heat the milk on medium low, stirring to ensure that the bottom doesn’t burn. Allow the milk to approach a boil, then turn the flame down to a simmer. The milk will boil down and the rice will soften. Mash, add sugar, and keep simmering. Complete the process by sprinkling in some flourishes: rose water, saffron, almonds. Serve hot or cold. The proof here is in the pudding (pun intended). And yes, I deliberately picked the South Indian version, because this is where lactose intolerance is said to be highest on the Sub-Continent. But food lovers will notice that the star ingredient is whole milk, and not some lactose-reduced product. Heating or boiling down milk only increases the amount of milk sugar you get sip for sip. Rice pudding is not the only lactic delight in the wildly diverse world of South Asian cuisine. My husband and I regularly gorge on a Northern Indian “doughnut” called g ulab jamun . To prepare it, mix milk powder, flour, and soda (a leavening agent). Then add yogurt, lemon juice, and milk, and knead the mixture into a dough. Divide the dough into small balls, then fry the balls in hot ghee until golden, and drain. Place them into a hot syrup and soak for several hours. Like the pudding, this delightful recipe features sugar and milk. The milk powder is like condensed milk: it’s concentrated milk sugar. If you’re tempted to think that lactic love is new to India, think again. Sure, milk consumption has ridden on the coattails of increasing GDP and the spread of refrigeration. But dairy goes back a long way in Indian history. Scholars believe that milk products became fixtures in religious ceremonies and royal diets more than three thousand years ago. These foods were mainstays of the diets of herders who invaded India from Afghanistan. These conquerors, who called themselves the Aryans, swept first into the Indus Valley in the northwest, then made their way east, before heading south. The ancient Aryans evidently had a high opinion of cows and cows’ milk. Milk was sacred. The ancient Indian system of medicine (Āyurveda) also ascribed curative properties to cow dairy: yogurt, curds, and even fluid milk. One foundational work on Āyurveda, in fact, describes milk in the following way: “Milk is said to be the greatest of vivifying substances, the elixir of life!” (Thank you Professor Brick for the translation!) Cow’s milk ghee -- a kind of clarified or heated butter traditionally made from churning yogurt -- enjoyed the most esteem and remains a superfood in Ayurvedic circles. If you don’t believe me, check out this video. The Indians were not alone in regarding milk as something special. If we move east, dairy products have historically occupied an important role in the diets of the people in the Eastern Steppe. This group includes Tibetans, who herd yaks in alpine meadows; people in Central Asia, who domesticated horses and made a habit of downing bubbly horse milk; and Mongolians, who have long consumed copious amounts of cow and sheep yogurt. Yak ghee Mongolian fried curds (sweet), April 2017 Mongolian cheese (April 2017) The Chinese also prove to be no exception. In recent centuries, they haven’t been prolific milk chuggers, but mostly for economic reasons. After doing a little digging, I noticed that people in China historically consumed dairy when they could afford to -- not just the milk of cows, but also sheep, donkeys, horses, yaks, and buffalos. And yes, I discovered the occasional reference to the milk of camels. Brined Paneer-like Cheese (Zhangzhou, Nov 2019) Beijing milk curds (April 2017) While looking for the camel butter, I also found recipes for many milk-based dishes. Wontons stuffed with paneer. Fish stewed in milk. Tea prepared with cream . Plenty of yogurt and cheese: fresh, stretched, and preserved in ash like thousand year eggs. There’s also a recipe for baklava . (I know there are fans of this sweet treat among you). What surprised me the most were doctors. Like their counterparts in India, Chinese doctors also thought cow’s milk did the body good. “Milk is the most nourishing of foods,” wrote one healer in the seventh century. “It is far better than meat.” Chinese healers also celebrated the mild cooling action of milk. They insisted that cow's milk in particular was the best thing to give sick people and the elderly. They even went so far as to prescribe it (warmed) for the runs. One of the earliest formulas, in fact, combines milk with sweet-smelling peppers that look like miniature pinecones. With respect to ghee, Chinese doctors also echoed Indian doctors and claimed it was the elixir of immortality. Some of these recipes survive to this day: soft paneer like cheeses in Yunnan (Western China); brined soft paneer like cheeses near Canton; butter in Western China: especially for tea; bubbly horse milk in Sichuan and Inner Mongolia; yogurt in Beijing; soft, stir-fried and deep-fried milk curds; and pudding -- lots of pudding . Made with sweet rice beer , with ginger juice , or just eggs . Yunnan fresh goat cheese (made like paneer). April 2017 Fried Buffalo milk (Shunde, SE China, Nov 2017) ----- As I look back, it’s really no coincidence that I discovered the reference to camel milk butter at a site in the northwest. The medical strips, in fact, were located smack in the middle of the Silk Road. Most likely, dairy products traveled that trade route, along with flatbreads. By the way, the local Bactrian camels produce milk rich enough for butter. The Silk Road, furthermore, did far more than move ingredients and specific dishes. Trade routes -- and yes, the pernicious influence of money -- can also stimulate broader cultural changes. As we will see next time, the Silk Road introduced new faiths to China: Nestorianism (a variety of Christianity), Manicheanism (from Iran), Islam (from the Near East), and Buddhism (from India via Central Asia). Buddhism especially would transform Chinese food: not only what people ate, but how they classified their foods, and more importantly, how they understood the relationship between eating and salvation. ----- As for camel butter, I still don’t have a recipe for it. But I found camel milk a couple years ago in Beijing. It’s not bad. I have since found that confection-makers in the United Arab Emirates use it to make chocolate. .. Camel Milk (Beijing, April 2017) The recipes made me re-evaluate popular ideas about genes and diet. For years, I had assumed that I would be better off without dairy. Nobody in ancient China would have ever thought to eat ice cream, right? As it turns out, there are stories about an evil Chinese emperor who ate camphor-flavored frozen yogurt. I now give myself permission to just follow my gut. And it is telling me it’s time for another serving of rice pudding -- rice pudding is the stuff of enlightenment. Thoughts about milk and dairy? Did you try your hand at making some of these recipes? What do recipes tell you about the world? And would you eat chili ice cream? Recipe resources For the recipe for paneer sabzi, which we made in Food Lab in January 2020 (pictured above), click here . I highly recommend making your own paneer at home. It's cheap, easy, and tastes a lot better than the store-bought stuff (which is dry). This recipe will *not* work with goat milk (when it is ultra-pasteurized). It's also best to use "gently" pasteurized milk left unhomogenized. Also check out a butter chicken recipe provided by a former student of ASIAN 258, Sara Farooqui (who ran a food lab for the class in Winter 2018). More on Chinese Milk and the Science of Lactose Intolerance On lactose intolerance in China and clinical elsewhere Stretched cheese w/glamour shot We've had many conversations in YellowDig about baklava, check out cheese baklava . Here are recipes for rice beer curds and butter cookies Further readings Miranda Brown "Mr. Song’s Cheeses, Southern China, 1368-1644.” Gastronomica: The Journal of Critical Food Studies 19.2 (Summer 2019): 29-42. Elaine Khosrova. Butter: A Rich History (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2016). Anne Mendelson . Milk: The Surprising Story of Milk Through the Ages (Knopf, 2008) Andrea Wiley. Re-Imagining Milk (Routledge Series for Creative Teaching and Learning in Anthropology). Routledge, 2019. Françoise Sabban. “Un savoir-faire oublié: Le travail du lait en Chine ancienne.” Zibun: Memoirs of the Research Institute for Humanistic Studies , Kyoto University 21 (1986): 31–65. Hilary Smith. "Good Food, Bad Bodies: Lactose Intolerance and the Rise of Milk Culture in China." In Moral Foods: The Construction of Nutrition and Health in Modern Asia , 262-84. Edited by Angela Ki Che Leung and Melissa L. Caldwell (Hawaii, 2019). Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. https://thecuriouseater.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page

In 1996, I found myself eating often at vegetarian buffets in southern Taiwan. On most days, I ordered plates of braised gluten. The gluten not only looked like meat, but also mimicked the flavor and texture of the real thing. It was also surprisingly tasty. Served in thick sauce and flanked by hearty mushrooms, gluten was the meat lover’s solution to meatless living. Vegetarian pork (Beijing 2019) I frequented vegetarian restaurants, because in those days, I didn’t eat meat - mostly out of laziness and for superficial reasons. My accidental vegetarianism, however, surprised people in Taiwan. After all, I was an American, and Americans had a reputation for being beef lovers. Folks in Taiwan would ask, “Are you religious?” That question surprised me. I had *not* connected vegetarianism with any form of spirituality, let alone ethical considerations. In the 1990s, virtuous eating had yet to be invented in the American context. Californians like me refrained from eating meat mostly for health and vanity. But in Taiwan, the cultural matrix was different. Vegetarianism had religious connotations. Older folks associated it with devout Buddhists and Taoists. I hadn’t given much thought to mock meats until a couple of years ago, when it made headlines. Fake meat -- plant based and lab grown -- has become all the rage. Some of these companies had begun pushing their products in Asia. To my chagrin, Patrick O. Brown, the CEO of Impossible Burger, said that his product would save the world from the environmental damage caused by Chinese carnivorism. Adding insult to injury, Brown acted like Westerners had invented mock meats. He was furthermore ignorant about the thousand-year tradition of meat substitutes, one inspired by concern for animal welfare. What follows below is a letter I have been tempted to send CEO Brown. You can tell me whether it is a good idea to share it. ----- Mr. Brown, Congrats on rolling out the ethical burger! I applaud your decision to move the dial forward and to help curb greenhouse gas emissions by promoting more sustainable food production. Bravo! I will admit that I was a bit *surprised* (!?#@!) to see you quoted as saying ““Every time someone in China eats a piece of meat, a little puff of smoke goes up in the Amazon.” You *do* know that average Chinese meat consumption is half what it is in the United States? So why pick on China? Casual racism aside, you also ignored that Asians have been eating vegetarian for millennia. They have done so for ethical reasons. By the way, Asians also do a very nice job making mock meats, which are stunning in their verisimilitude. Most importantly, Asian mock meats are cheap. They’re made with plant-based ingredients like gluten and konnyaku (Devil’s Tongue). All vegetarian meal in Beijing (Nov 2019) Your team should have done more thorough market research. If you dropped that smug tone, it might also help your sales in the world’s largest market. Just think: 1.4 billion Chinese customers, sticking impossible burger on their dandan noodles, in their daily buns, and in their dumplings. Since you haven't done ASIAN 258, perhaps I can enlighten you? I’ll start with a short history of enlightenment in Asia. Buddhist Enlightenment. Not your Palo Alto variety. It all began with a North Indian prince who lived from the fifth to sixth century BC. His name was Siddhartha Gautama (suh· daar ·tuh gaw ·tuh·muh), or Sid. When Sid was 29, he had a mid-life crisis. He left his palace subdivision, unloaded his possessions, and backpacked around India. Think Eat Pray Love. In ancient India, enlightenment did *not* mean going to some heaven or to a Beverly Hills mansion. Instead, it meant escaping reincarnation (which always came with the threat of being reborn as a lab rat or ant). To reach enlightenment, or nirvana, Sid tried various tricks. He did deprivation and started looking like Mick Jagger. That didn’t work. Then Sid started acting like Mick Jagger and gave gratification a shot. Also no cigar. Out of ideas, he tried meditating by a bodhi tree. Luckily, a shepherdess spotted Sid and noticed that he was looking a little gaunt. Concerned, she offered him a nice porridge made with rich milk to fatten him up (I like to imagine it was kheer, since I just wrote about that last week for my class). That lactic bomb came just in a nick of time. It gave Sid the energy he needed to power through his marathon meditating. After 49 days, he reached Enlightenment and got a name change (Buddha, the Enlightened One). He then shared his ideas with his circle of friends. But he died too soon. Apparently, he ate a plate of bad pork, which led to his consciousness being extinguished ahead of schedule. That was sad for his besties. But they consoled themselves with sharing Sid’s brand of salvation with the world. It’s called Buddhism. Get it? Buddha, Buddhism. Like intermittent fasting, Buddhism went viral. Some of his followers hopped on camels and followed the caravans on the Silk Road to China. By the fourth century AD, Buddhism was a big thing with China’s top influencers. But Chinese Buddhists were not yet vegetarians. Not even close. A good monk could eat meat as long as he didn’t see the beast getting killed, or didn’t hear the shrieks. It was also ok if the animal wasn’t killed just for your meal specifically. What you don't know can’t hurt you, right? However, things changed after Chinese monks did a little more reading. While scanning the sutra blogs, they noticed that there were vegetarians in India. Those vegetarians had not only sworn off meat, fish, and eggs, but also alcohol, garlic, and oniony things. That blew their mind. The Chinese team then realized that you could gamify the road to salvation. Like GradeCraft, they saw multiple pathways to reach nirvana. You could shave your head and become a monk or nun. Or you could donate money to the poor or to monasteries. Or you could eat your way to enlightenment. Big karmic payoffs awaited those who refrained from killing their meals. Chinese Buddhists highlighted other benefits to vegetarianism. Vegetarianism was good for developing empathy. Once you stopped killing, you started wanting to protect *all* life. And indeed, some monks were so empathetic they swore off sesame oil, for fear that a fly might accidentally get squashed in the press. These monks also advertised the practical benefits of giving up meat, fish, eggs, and members of the onion family on Buddhist Twitter. Meat-free living, for example, meant no farting and fewer nightmares. Life without garlic was also good for celibacy, as garlic was believed to stir up the passions (in layman's terms, it makes you horny). This way of thinking caught on in China. The leaders of powerful monasteries liked it. The emperor liked it. So did the rich and idle. Soon enough, lay people -- that is, men and women who did not become monks and nuns -- adopted the vegetarian diet. While they enjoyed the virtue signaling, lay influencers found cruelty-free eating personally a little challenging. Truth be told, the meatless diet did not fit well with the cultural matrix of the time. How so, you ask? Well, first of all, people in medieval China were like University of Michigan students. They loved their (rice) beer and (lamb) burgers, and they believed that these foods were essential for staying fit. When some vegetarian pals died, their friends would throw shade at them. They’d write obits that told the world they asked for it! Second, ancient Chinese didn’t want to be skinny. Poor people were skinny. Sick people were skinny. Rich people, the popular kids, were not. So when Chinese saw images of skinny vegetarian monks, they were turned off. "That won’t do!" they cried. "We want to look happy." In ancient China, happy meant being well padded -- having a belly and sporting cherubic cheeks. Faced with these challenges, Buddhist cooks went back to the drawing board. They held team meetings and came up with ways of preparing meals that met all of their personal goals: cruelty free, appetizing, and fattening. For inspiration, the Buddhist team looked to noodle makers. By the sixth century, the Chinese were expert noodle makers, apt at manipulating the gluten levels in wheat pasta. At some point, someone realized that if you stick dough in water too long, the starch will float to the top, leaving behind something that looks like a brain (yes, a brain). That “brain” could be shaped and cooked. What is more, with the right knife skills, the “brain” could be made to look and chew just like a chicken leg (even with the skin on). Freshly-washed gluten, ready to be steamed and braised Emboldened by the success of the experiment, cooks began playing with other ingredients. Some of them messed around with dried yogurt and paneer, carving them in the shape of eggs and bones. Others goofed off with jellies. Much to their delight, they realized that by adding food coloring to one jelly called konnyaku , you could make a dish that resembled animal lungs. Yum yum! Our ancient kitchen scientists then rolled out their creations. Their taste testers liked the look and texture of fake meat. But there was just one problem: the gluten and jellies didn’t have a lot of fat. So Buddhist chefs added butter and sesame oil to the mix. They piled on the cheese, sprinkling it on top of wheat noodles and stuffing it into buns. Fake meat was hot, especially the gluten balls. Soon enough, everyone in Asia wanted those balls. They began turning up in Korean monasteries. Then they took Japan by storm. Fake meat even made its way to the United States. Japanese immigrants brought it to North America in the 1960s. This is why the food goes by a Japanese name ( seitan ). Fun fact: gluten has caught on in survivalist circles. If you are curious about how to make it from scratch, there’s a guy in Tennessee who can teach you how to make the stuff in a sink and crock pot. By the way, he says seitan will be good for bunkering down during the coming apocalypse. By now, Mr. Brown, you’re wondering why you wasted so much money on R&D when anyone can make their own fake meat. Well, as my mom would say: that’s your fault. No need to reinvent the wheel. Read food history. Your friend, The Other Brown Recipe For the record, I am not a huge fan of the survivalist’s mock meats. But I love braised gluten, even when it is not shaped like chicken. The recipe for an elegant Shanghainese “cold dish” ( kaofu 烤麩) appeals even to the carnivores in my family. A few years ago, I showed the recipe to one of the GSIs, a nutritionist. She confirmed that the combination of gluten, wood ears, shiitake mushrooms, and peanuts gives you a whole protein. If you want to make your own gluten, you can use this recipe. The leftover starch, by the way, is liangpi 涼皮 (cold skin noodle), which I saw some of you avidly discussing on YellowDig Braised Gluten (Dec 24, 2019) Further reading Fuschia Dunlop, “China, the birthplace of fake meat,” Economist , June 2, 2018. Cathy Erway, “The Buddhist Mock-Meats Paradox,” Taste . John Kieschnick, “Buddhist Vegetarianism in China” in Sterckx, Of Tripod and Palate , 186-212. Rachel Laudan, Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History (California Studies in Food and Culture) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015), Chapter 3: “Buddhism Transforms the Cuisines of South and East Asia, 260 B.C.E.-800 C.E.,” 102-132. Robban Toleno. "The Celebration of Congee in East Asian Buddhism.” Journal of Chinese Buddhist Studies , vol. 30 (July 2017): 125-168. -----Skilled Eating: Knowledge of Food in Yichu’s Shishi liutie , a Buddhist Encyclopedia from Tenth-Century China (Doctoral dissertation, University of British Columbia). Vancouver, BC: UBC Theses and Dissertations, 2015. Toleno is the world's foremost expert on Buddhist cuisine. He also has an unbelievable talent for reconstructing and photographing ancient culinary products. If you enjoyed the picture of the lungs, I encourage you to follow him on Twitter @RobbanToleno. His pictures are high art! Thanks for reading! 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What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet -- Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet Mr. Shakespeare was admittedly not thinking about food when he wrote those lines about young love. But he should have. Roses taste great in Yunnan rose pastry. Such quibbles aside, these three lines capture our shared conundrum. For the last few weeks, we have debated whether ‘mint bibimbap’ is ‘bibimbap’ and whether Chinese wheat noodles or sopa de fideos can be called ‘pasta.’ So now it’s time to turn our attention to a related food controversy: the thorny question of vegan cheese. ----- Background as follows: In recent years, environmental and ethical-eating activists have taken to preparing creamy camembert and ricotta with beans and almond milk. They have rolled out their pricey creations to much acclaim -- and complaints filed by lawyers with various governments. Combatants claim it’s misleading to use ‘cheese’ for something *without* animal dairy. So vegan cheese is an oxymoron. Period. Obviously, there’s more to it than mere labeling. The North American and European dairy industries are in financial trouble. Consumers are wary of milk; and milk drinking is down. Not surprisingly, dairy farmers are suffering. They have declared war on soy and oat “milk”: they want governments to force vegan cheese makers to call themselves something else. And they absolutely want us to eat more dairy. They would appreciate it, too, if Meghan Markle were to shut up about oat milk lattes. I do sympathize with dairy farmers, and I adore dairy. I’ll also confess that I have no desire to try bean camembert. None whatsoever. But I disagree with the idea of reserving terms like ‘cheese,’ 'milk,' and 'butter' exclusively for animal dairy. Why? People have been making vegan cheeses for centuries in Asia, and labeling them as such. Tofu, in fact, was once a poor man’s paneer. Sound crazy? Obviously. We nowadays think of tofu as a vegan food, the antithesis of dairy. But if we bracket our current habits of labeling, we can see this problem in a different light. To do so, we need to think through the process. How is tofu made? In a nutshell, the video reveals five steps: 1. Heat a milky liquid to a boil 2. Add coagulants like vinegar or salt water residue 3. Stir until curds appear 4. Strain the curds 5. Press into block Artisanal Tofu Making (Zhuji, Zhejiang, November 2018) If you know how paneer is made, you’ll recognize the process. The only difference is that tofu requires an additional step: You first turn the beans into soy milk by soaking and grinding them. Traditionally, this was done in a rotary grindstone (yes, the same grindstone that hobbled through the Silk Road and whose arrival in northwest China spawned noodle culture). But apart from this step, the process is identical to cheesemaking. The similarities were so striking, in fact, that John Saris, an early 17th-century English traveler to Japan, mistook tofu for cheese. He was not alone in seeing the similarities. A Spanish missionary who lived in southeast China started calling tofu "bean cheese." He was apparently a fan of the stuff -- and liked to eat it dressed with caraway seeds and fried in butter! Guess the curd? Dairy or Soy? ----- So who got the bright idea to make cheese from beans? We’re not exactly sure. Scholars have invested significant energies fighting about this. Some of them have overturned a centuries’ old myth that tofu was invented by a Han-dynasty prince (d. 122 BC). After a lot of poking through old texts, the distinguished Japanese historian, Shinoda Osamu 篠田統 (1899-1978), discovered that ancient Asians didn’t do tofu. This surprised him. Like most folks, he had assumed that the Chinese had been eating tofu since time immemorial. Tofu, however, was a *recent* development and only debuted at the end of the Tang Dynasty (618-907). This theory, repeated in our reading for this week, makes sense to me. Here's why: dairy was hot then. During the Tang dynasty, the Silk Road reached its height. By then, Chinese cuisine had been exposed to foreign influences for centuries. And if we look at Tang banquet menus, it’s clear that China’s rulers enjoyed scrumptious meals laden with dairy. They ate foods similar to kulfi, sipped chaas, and topped their lamb plates with paneer. Cheese, however, was out of reach for the masses. Buffalos and cows were expensive to raise, especially in the south where there isn't a lot of space for grassy meadows. Besides, these beasts eat a lot, especially when they are lactating! Their appetites can become a problem when people are many and land is scarce, which was the situation in eighteenth-century China. So what was the foodie farmer to do? Well, he looked around and noticed that there were *a lot* of soybeans around. Soybeans grow easily in mediocre soil and were cheap. But soybeans in ancient China were not a popular food. People didn’t like them, because in their cultural matrix, soybeans were associated with the poor. To be sure, the legume was a good soil fertilizer (like sheep dung). It replenished the nitrogen depleted by intensive farming. Soybeans were also mildly useful as a relish: some cooks added wheat and made a fermented bean sauce. The humble bean, however, got a face lift sometime in the Tang dynasty. A peasant cook realized that you could grind down the soybeans and produce a milky liquid. How did she get that idea? Well, check out the cultural matrix. In the medieval Chinese food system, soy was one of the five types of grains: Not a yummy grain like millet, wheat, or rice, but something you ate only when you were starving. What’s more, soy had a reputation for being bad for you: it gave you flatulence. Gassy or not, Chinese cooks treated soybeans like grains. They soaked them, steamed them whole, and ate them. Sometimes, they ground them up like wheat and made flour from them. One day, however, somebody was horsing around in the kitchen and tossed soaking soybeans into the rotary grindstone. Much to their delight, they saw a milky product emerge. Then the lightbulb went off. Someone tried making a simple cheese by heating the milk and adding vinegar. What resulted was something that not only looked like paneer, but shared its mild flavor, springy soft texture, and non-melting properties. The cooks baptized their creation ‘bean dairy’ ( shuru 菽乳) or ‘bean curd’ ( doufu 豆腐). They were probably relieved, too, when they realized they could eat the 'cheese' without getting smelly. It would take several centuries, however, before Chinese cooks really got the hang of making high-quality cheese with beans. And indeed, those who could afford to eat well continued to mostly do dairy. Rich people liked the fact that dairy was the elixir of immortality, while soybeans were poisonous. (Incidentally, doctors said that radishes fixed soy poisoning.) The poor had no choice but to stick with their beans. It would take countless experiments in the kitchen, fooling around with various coagulants, before a cook arrived at the winning formula. The discovery of nigari, made from salt water residue, provided a technological breakthrough. Curds made with it are nice and firm. ----- Once Chinese cooks stumbled upon the right formula (or formulas) in the sixteenth century, tofu quickly overtook cheese in popularity. A million varieties of tofu and tofu byproducts sprung up. Tofu pressed and marinated to make jerky. Tofu cut into noodles. Tofu “skins” for wraps and soups. Silken tofu “pudding.” Frozen tofu with a honeycomb texture. Aged tofu that lures me across the street (and repels my mother-in-law). By the way, that aged tofu, or stinky tofu, is wickedly good fried and served with chili. That winning formula also changed the way people ate around the world. Tofu became a big “thing” throughout Asia. Today, you can enjoy tender bean curd in spicy Korean stews. I recommend sundubu-jjigae if you haven’t tried it. On a cold day, it will warm your inside and delight your palate. Bean 'cheese' also spawned a craze in Japan. This is evident from bestsellers entitled, One Hundred Tricks with Tofu (1782), which was followed by A Hundred More Tricks with Tofu , in 1784. Since then, tofu has spread far and wide. It has inserted itself in the cuisines of people living in Southeast Asia. The Vietnamese, for one, have perfected the techniques for producing tofu from tofu whey, and stuff their bean curds with ground pork and cook it with tomato and fish sauce. The Thais flavor their deep fried tofu goodness with fish sauce, chili, and peanut. In the Philippines, people enjoy silken tofu, or taho, in syrup as a snack. Tofu has obviously landed in the Americas. In the eighteenth century, Ben Franklin was desperate to get his hands on the stuff, but had trouble buying the soybeans. Nowadays, the opposite is a problem. Soy can be hard to dodge. It is everywhere: not only in your soy sauce, but in places where you least expect it -- for example, your power bars and cookies. In recent decades, tofu has become a mainstay of the American diet. Americans have their take on this food. For example, some folks add it to eco-friendly slimming salads, which go by the cringeworthy name of Tofu Buddha Bowl. In case you are wondering, tofu serves with the American staples of virtuous eating: kale, quinoa, and sauerkraut (for good gut bacteria). It is also now sweet. You can buy tofu ice cream. There’s Fruity Pebbles Cheesecake made with the bean, and creme brulee tofu, too. For the brave of heart, Tofu “Spam” sushi awaits. ----- Jokes aside, the historical perspective allows you to see that foods are like people. They are shapeshifters. Time can render them unrecognizable. (Would you recognize me in college?) But if you speak the right code, you’ll start to see behind the façade caused by the name changes and the transmutations over the generations. Along the way, you’ll remember there was a time when people fried their tofu in butter (who would have ever thought?). Push back a few centuries more, and you’ll glimpse the man or woman who had the bright idea of making cheese from beans. Go a little further and you’ll see how the birth of tofu, now a quintessentially Asian food, was a product of cross-cultural contact and imported technology. Only then, will you grasp the rich history of the food, and its chief irony: Chinese once loved cheese more than beans. ----- For all the lawyerly disputation, so far as I’m concerned, if it looks like cheese and tastes like cheese, it’s cheese. Or, if you want to be cute, call dairy cheese ‘animal-based tofu.’ Are you a tofu lover, a paneer person, or both? Let us know. Have a tofu or paneer recipe you want your peers to know about, feel free to post! Have an opinion about what we should call bean brie? Sources (Not Hyperlinked): H. T. Huang, Science and Civilisation in China, Volume 6, Biology and Biological Technology, Part V: Fermentation and Food Science , ed. Joseph Needham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). I think Huang is an indispensable resource, but I think he’s wrong about the Han mural. Nihon ryōri hiden shūsei: genten gendaigoyaku 日本料理秘伝集成 : 原典現代語訳 . Kyoto: Dōhōsha, 1985. Vol. 9. This series, available through Hathi Trust, is an excellent resource for anyone who wants to know more about the history of Japanese cuisine. Rachel Laudan, Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History (California Studies in Food and Culture) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015), Chapter 1-2; Chapter 3: “Buddhism Transforms the Cuisines of South and East Asia, 260 B.C.E.-800 C.E.,” 102-132. Further Reading: Jia-chen Fu, The Other Milk: Reinventing Soy in Republican China (Washington, 2018). Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. https://thecuriouseater.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page

In March 2012, a chance trip to a restaurant changed my life. No, I didn’t meet Barak Obama, the Dali Lama, or Brad Pitt. For the budding food historian in me, it was more momentous. I encountered Biryani. I was in Toronto, playing hooky from a dreary conference. Tired of panels, I decided to wander around the city with my husband, checking out all of the hipster cafes. By early evening, the exercise left us famished. “I’m hungry,” the husband declared. “What’s the plan?” We looked up and down the street, seeking out something different. Then our eyes caught sight of a South Asian restaurant. The words, “Mughlai,” appeared in the window display. Neither of us knew what that meant, but we decided to take the plunge anyway. Greeted by the maître d, we scanned the menu and just started pointing. We were hungry and were up for anything. Within minutes, warm naan , freshly baked, appeared on the table, followed swiftly by crispy samosas, filled with potatoes and spicy accents, then creamy curries. The highlight of the evening, the gorgeous diva, arrived fashionably late. It was the biryani : lovingly prepared with spices and succulent morsels of lamb, garnished with raisins and nuts. The rice was different from the stickier, short-grain varieties you get from Panda. That night, the rice was elongated. And each of the grains stood apart from the others and glistened like pearls. I could taste the hint of saffron. Shad (Fish) Biryani, By Asha As I took my first bite, Middle Eastern pilaf popped into my brain. The concept was similar, but the flavor profile of the Indian dish, bursting with aromatic spices, was something else. ——— Intrigued by the meal, I did a little research. I had guessed that Mughlai food had something to do with the Mughals, who ruled India from 1526 to 1857. I wanted to know more. Who were these people? And why did they make such yummy food? As it turns out, ‘Mughal’ (also written ‘Mogul’ and ‘Moghul’) is something of a misnomer. The Mughals preferred to call themselves the Timurids. The English name came from European visitors. That name has inspired colorful modern expressions like ‘internet mogul.”’ Technically speaking, the Europeans were right, even if the name was tacky. The Mughals were descended from Genghis Khan (ca. 1158-1227) on the maternal side. But people are often picky about their heritage. They select which ancestors to acknowledge. Like many Americans of German descent, my dad says he’s Irish. Those choices disclose a lot. They help us understand not only people’s pretensions, but also their culinary proclivities. My dad likes his Guinness and potatoes, and his St. Patty’s Day. He never waxes about Schnitzel. Schnitzel (Mabel Gray, Oct 2018) In the case of the Mughals, they thought of themselves as Central Asian Turks from modern-day Uzbekistan. But they were not just any ole Turks. They were cultured Turks. In the context of early modern Central Asia, this meant they were Turks who spoke and ate as Persians. Persianized or not, the Mughals ended up in India. You might call it an accident. The Mughal leader, Babur (1483-1530), had the bad luck of becoming a khan while still a tween. His relatives took advantage of his tender years and stripped him of territory. After losing a battle, Baby Babur found himself pushed out of Uzbekistan. On a lark, he decided to invade north India, “Hindustan.” And by some twist of fate, he emerged victorious. India should have been enough. But Babur was a hard man to please. To the end of his days, he was sore about losing Central Asia. He wanted to live among Persian speakers and fellow Muslims. But what really irked him was the loss of Central Asian cuisine. In his mind, good food was Persian food, or Persian inspired. It had a few local flourishes and influences from China, and featured pastries like naan and samosa . Persian food in Central Asia was also loaded with other goodies: fruits like muskmelons and raisins , as well as icy sherbets. In that cuisine, rice pilaf was, to quote Lizzie Collingham, “the piece de resistance.” Further complicating matters, Babur *despised* Indian food. He had no need for vegetarianism; meat was manly food in his cultural matrix . Babur also turned his nose down at wholesome everyday Indian meals: healthy lentils and chickpeas, served with rice, and flavored with iron-rich turmeric and ghee. ————- Babur’s whining made me scratch my head. How could India not be enough? What was he missing so much? Since it was not very convenient to do a road trip to Uzbekistan, I consoled myself with becoming an experimental (and not an armchair) anthropologist. Trying to get a handle on Babur’s gripes, I decided to eat what he ate. So I prepared the Central Asian version of biryani. It was called plov , or pulao. There are, of course, many variants (this one uses chili peppers and post-dated Babur). Some versions fry the rice in butter. But I’ll start with another: Brown some onions in a wide pan. Now add the meat. It can be chicken legs (don’t remove the skins!), or some sheep on bone. After browning the meat, it’s time to stir in the long-grained rice, about 70 percent cooked. (No sushi rice please!) After a few minutes, add broth, salt, and pepper. A dash of cumin. In the last few minutes of cooking, sprinkle in carrot ribbons. Central Asian plov or pulao (Uighur style, Dec 24, 2020) I served up the dish to my husband. He had been demanding biryani since the trip. I told him he was only getting the Central Asian prototype. We needed to know why the early Mughals complained about the food in India. As I looked on, he took a bite. “It’s good,” he said. “But the flavor is totally different. The Indian version has a lot more spices and you know how I love my spices.” Now I was curious. Why was the Indian version so different? I then compared the recipes. The contemporary North Indian version has a lot of spices. Cardamom, cloves, saffron, fennel, turmeric. Some versions include many others. The Central Asian version looked bare bone in comparison. For spices, my version only used pepper and cumin. To explain the divergence, I hit up Collingham again. Apparently, the aromatic and pungent version came later in Mughal rule. It was a product of the kitchen of Babur’s grandson, Akbar, who ruled India from 1556-1605. Akbar was a different man from Grandpa Babur. Akbar was the perfect UM student for the Third Century Initiative, a citizen of the world. Yes, he spoke plenty of Persian. But he was famously open-minded. Though a Muslim, he was crazy about Jesus . He named his wives Mary, decorated his palace with Catholic icons, and invited Jesuits to come tutor his many sons. He was also not hostile to Hindus, who made up the lion’s share of his realm. In fact, Akbar married a Hindu princess and celebrated Diwali. Towards the end of his life, he even toyed with vegetarianism. According to Collingham, Akbar’s kitchen reflected that eclecticism. His meals fused Central Asian, Persian, and Indian elements. Collingham takes this as evidence of Akbar’s cosmopolitanism. I have a simpler explanation. Akbar was a second-gen South Asian. Like me, his mouth wanted different things from his parents. Whereas mine craves sickly sweet foods drenched in corn syrup, his longed for spices. Not surprisingly, Akbar’s chefs took cues from their master. Instead of doing what Genevieve Ko demands (i.e., following the recipe to a ‘t’), they veered from the Central Asian script and improvised. In the process, they adapted a Central Asian recipe for the local palate. In practical terms, this meant piling on the spices. Cardamom big and small, coriander, cloves for aroma. Bay leaves, fennel, ginger, garlic. The chef’s adjustments, of course, went beyond realigning the flavor profile. Over time, chefs also took advantage of locally-abundant ingredients, producing an infinite number of variants. Tamarind , a tangy fruit that can be made into paste, provides one such example. These fruits abound in India and find their way into southern editions of biryani. So does seafood on the coast. If we are trying to sound smart, we can call those modifications examples of local adaptation. Local adaptation is something that often “happens” to foreign recipes. Those recipes get reconfigured as cooks modify them in response to local tastes and available resources. Take the humble dumpling. In China, cooks stuff them with pork; in the United States, that filling might have Phili Cheesesteak . Local tastes are not the only force behind recipe evolution. Religious differences and the broader cultural matrix can stimulate adjustments. There are now meatless renditions of biryani. Those modifications allowed Hindus, many of whom are serious vegetarians , to join the ever growing ranks of pilaf lovers. ——- At the end of the day, I am happy that Akbar and his cooks deviated from the original recipe. Their biryani may be no plov , but it is equal to the original. Abkar’s biryani has also given me plenty of food for thought. Like many of you, I had begun my food history odyssey with the conviction that we should strive to make “ authentic ” food, or keep food just like it is in the home country. But biryani changed my mind. Phili Cheesesteak dumplings may be *interesting* but it’s not because there is anything inherently wrong with changing the recipe. Deviating from the recipe can actually lead to good things. Akbar’s version of his ancestors’ plov may not win any authenticity awards from Central Asians. But it is certainly delicious. It has become its own delectable thing. Are you a biryani person or a plov eater? Do you have a secret passion for Phili Cheesesteak dumplings? What do you think of authentic food? Thoughts on doing a biryani (also called pulao) lab? Happy YellowDiggin' Sources for Blog: Read: Lizzie Collingham, Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), Chapter 2: “Biryani: The Great Mughals,” 13-46. Recipe resources: There are many different regional versions of biryani. Professor Jo Sharma has provided me with some recipe links and resources for South Asian food: https://www.bongeats.com/recipe/kolkata-mutton-biryani - one of my fave sites and their videos are spot on. https://www.archanaskitchen.com/thalapakattu-chicken-biryani-recipe - a Tamil one again with specific local spices https://www.topsrilankanrecipe.com/sri-lankan-beef-biryani-recipe-potatoes-easy-homemade/ There is also yakhni pulao which was cooked in Akbar’s kitchens, and that my friend popular food blogger and public historian Rana Safvi showcases: https://ranasafvi.com/yakhni-pulao/ (yakhni is stock). It is truly delicious! (MB, I counted nine different spices in this recipe!) Central Asia and Western China: For food in Inner and Central Asia, I consult Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid, Beyond the Great Wall: Recipes and Travels in the Other China (Artisan; Illustrated edition, 2008). This is a beautiful recipe book with lots of cultural contextualization. It's my go-to for Uighur, Kazakh, Inner Mongolian, and Tibetan food. A must read! There is now a new recipe book on Central Asia by Caroline Eden and Eleanor Ford, Samarkand ( January 1, 2016). I am still trying to track it down! Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. https://thecuriouseater.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page

“Massaman curry is like a lover,” King Rama II of Siam (1768-1824) once wrote, “As peppery and fragrant as the cumin seed. Its exciting allure arouses. I am urged to seek its source.” Those lines, quoted in Coleen Sen’s section on Thai curries, might be corny, but they connect well to our journey through Asian food history. They express our shared conundrum. In a world where recipes have flowed freely between kitchens and continents, and mutate rapidly, how do we pin down the authentic “source” of a dish? ----- I was recently reminded of this problem watching Jamie Oliver prepare King Rama’s delicacy. Oliver made a point of showing his viewers how to make “the most authentic Massaman curry.” He clearly felt it was an urgent task. Massaman curry is now all over the news. A few years back, CNN named it one of the Fifty Most Delicious Dishes ever created. As a result, the Thai dish is so popular it now comes in a can. Oliver, however, wanted to give his fans a taste of the real deal: proper Thai cooking, made by a real Thai chef, and from scratch. No shortcuts, no labor-saving machines, and absolutely no cans. So like King Rama, Oliver sought out the “source.” He invited a native Thai chef, a lady named Khun Saiyuud Diwong , or Poo, the author of Cooking with Poo and the winner of the Diagram prize for oddest book title of the year. As Oliver looked on and the cameras rolled, Poo gave him an education. She showed viewers how it was done: how to pestle the aromatic spices, how to combine the pungent flavors, when to add the beef, the coconut milk, the fish sauce, the roasted peanuts, the bay leaves, and palm sugar. Oddly enough, her version had none of the cumin seed that had once made the king swoon. The result was nevertheless breathtaking: a rich curry, decadent enough to excite the passions of a king. ----- Struck by Oliver’s search for “real” Massaman curry, I did my own digging. I was curious about the curry. As Oliver pointed out, the curry “balanced” fresh local ingredients like lemongrass and gingery galangal with the sweetness of the palm sugar. It also blended the richness of coconut milk with the pungent umami of fish sauce. But there were also surprises: the beef - that piqued my curiosity. According to Reid, the ancient Thais did not consume mammals, which made sense given geography. Why bother raising livestock when you have easy access to seafood? Besides, the curry’s seasoned with things like bay leaves and fennel, two plants native to the Mediterranean. There was also the name. ‘Massaman’ is a loan word , meaning Muslim, which hints that there might be an interesting story. As it turns out, there *was* an interesting story. Some historians believe that the “source” that King Rama sought was none other than his consort. In her youth, the lady had sold sweets for a living and apparently cooked her way to his heart. What she brought to the palace, however, was not regular Thai cooking, but also foreign foods. In the context of Thailand, this would have included much more than the curry: but also biryani , samosas , and flatbreads . Apparently, the woman’s family had been from the fallen kingdom of Ayutthaya (1350-1767). Between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries, Ayutthaya was a great metropolis. Its ruins, about 40 miles from Bangkok, are now a UNESCO World Heritage site , attracting foreign tourists. Before its fall in 1767, Ayutthaya had boasted of a world-class capital, one that wowed early European visitors. The early modern Europeans compared it favorably to Paris, another city whose heart sat in the midst of a river. But Ayutthaya may have been much more. It had a sizable Persian community. The Persians intermingled with local royalty and sold carpets. Presumably, these seafaring foreigners also brought their Western foodways to Thailand. This is something suggested by the goat and beef in the Massaman curry, along with the use of aromatic spices like cinnamon. ----- Initially, I was taken by the story: A beloved, cosmopolitan woman was the source of this delicious dish. That was better than the myth about Marco Polo bringing back pasta from China. It’s spicy and sexy. I was so excited that I began examining earlier versions of the recipe from the late nineteenth century. A hundred thirty years ago, the curry looked even more foreign than it does today. For one thing it featured cumin seeds, which had excited the king but were missing from Poo’s version. And I nearly fell over reading that the older recipes had once employed sour orange juice and raisins. This, however, is where the story went off track. There were too many elements in the curry to chalk it all up to Persian influence. I saw ghee, an ingredient that screamed of possible Indian influence. Then there was the lard. Yes, the pig fat. Definitely a no no for observant Muslims. I started to wonder whether my Cantonese ancestors had also gotten into the action. The ghee and lard made me realize Massaman curry was not just a Persian recipe with a few Thai flourishes or adaptations. The curry paste testified to multiple culinary flows. The Persians, in fact, were not the only foreigners who had lived in Ayutthaya. Ayutthaya had been an international entrepôt. It had attracted South Asians, Malays, Chinese, Japanese, and European traders. The city also occupied a strategic position on the Indian Ocean Trade Route, also known as the Maritime Silk Road. By the eighteenth century, that trade route had been operational for more than 1000 years. Like the land-based Silk Road, the Indian Ocean trade route connected Europe and East Asia. But it charted a southern maritime route, one that navigated through the Sea of Arabia, off the Eastern coast of Africa, and wrapped around the southern tip of India before heading through the Bay of Bengal. The trade route then snaked its way through the perilous Strait of Malacca in Southeast Asia, before heading due north, to reach its final destination in coastal China. To imagine the kind of place Ayutthaya had been, we only need to glimpse the riches recovered from shipwrecks off the coasts of Indonesia. One shipwreck, the Belitung , dates from the late ninth century. That vessel had been Arab, but the crew was once multi-ethnic . Another , from a couple centuries later, contained a classical Chinese foodstuff: preserved eggs, also known as thousand-year eggs. The Indian Ocean Trade Route brought the world closer together. It allowed Europeans to consume and covet aromatic spices from India and Southeast Asia. It also helped the inhabitants of Baghdad enjoy Chinese porcelain, silk, and tea. And it encouraged Chinese royals to splurge on fine Western gold. The continual flow of people left its mark on Thai foodways. The unique mix of aromatic spices, fresh local ingredients, pungent and fishy flavors feature in other Thai dishes — and not just Massaman curry. Take Moo Satay, which Chef Ryan Waddell once taught my students to cook (see below). There, the coriander and cumin seeds also mix with lemongrass and galangal. We also find hints of Indian accents in the turmeric powder. There’s also plenty of pork, which points to influences further north. The result: the best dish most Americans have never heard of. The satay sauce is so good, I spoon it on my rice and eat it like ice cream. Basil Chicken in Curry (Chef Ryan, April 2018) Pork (Chef Ryan, April 2018) ------ For me, the lesson to be learnt is this. Foreign influences were not static or stable packages, which can be easily isolated, or removed. Instead, they are best understood through water metaphors. Water emphasizes the dynamic character of foreign influence. Like waves or streams, foreign influences easily mingle, not only with local cooking styles but also with each other. The metaphor also reminds us that those influences literally arrived in Thailand by sea, in boats once manned by multiethnic crews who shared their food on long ocean voyages. At the end of the day, the search for the “source” of Massamam curry isn’t much elusive as it is fluid. In the eighteenth century, that source lay not in the body of any single woman, nor in any one place or cooking tradition. Instead, Massaman curry was a group lift, one that brought together the foodways of people scattered across the globe. The curry is thus the brainchild of the traders and pirates who crossed vast expanses of ocean in search of spices and treasures. Echoes of those voyages centuries ago now fill our bowls. Sources (not hyperlinked): Chris Baker, "Ayutthaya Rising: From Land or Sea?" Journal of Southeast Asian Studies Vol. 34, No. 1 (Feb., 2003), pp. 41-62. Kenneth R. Hall, A History of Early Southeast Asia: Maritime Trade and Societal Development (Rowman & Littlefield, 2011). Panu Wongcha-Um, " What is Thai Cuisine? Thai Culinary Identity Construction From The Rise of the Bangkok Dynasty to Its Revival ." A Thesis Submitted For Degree of Master of Arts Department of History National University of Singapore. Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450-1680: Volume One, The Lands below the Waves (Yale University Press, 1988). Colleen Sen, Curry: A Global History (Reaktion Books, 2009), 90-105. Further reading: Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit, A History of Ayutthaya: Siam in the Early Modern World (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Amanda Respess, "The Abode of Water: Shipwreck Evidence and the Maritime Circulation of Medicine Between Iran and China in the 8th through 14th Centuries." PhD Dissertation (Anthropology and History), University of Michigan, 2020. Recipe Resources Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid, Hot, Sour, Salt, Sweet: A Culinary Journal through Southeast Asia (Artisan, 2000). David Thompson, Thai Food (Ten Speed, 2002). Moo Satay Recipe by Chef Ryan Waddell Marinade: 1 tablespoon coriander seeds 1 teaspoon cumin seeds 3 tablespoons finely chopped lemongrass 1 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon chopped galangal (or ginger) 1 ½ teaspoons turmeric powder Roasted chili powder to taste 1 cup coconut cream 1 tablespoon shaved palm sugar 2 tablespoons coconut or vegetable oil 1 pound pork loin Bamboo skewers soaked overnight in water (to keep from burning on the grill) Salt Satay Sauce: 4 each dried red chilis 1 tablespoon coriander seeds 1 tablespoon cumin seeds Salt to taste 1 tablespoon chopped lemongrass 1 tablespoon chopped galangal (or ginger) 1 teaspoon finely grated kaffir lime zest 1 tablespoon chopped shallots 2 tablespoons chopped garlic 1 ½ cups coconut cream 2 tablespoons shaved palm sugar ½ cup coconut milk 1 cup finely ground peanuts 1 pandanus leaf (can use extract if fresh not available) 1 tablespoon fish sauce Roasted chili pepper to taste Pickles: ¼ cup white sugar ¼ cup white vinegar Salt 1 small cucumber quartered and sliced 4 shallots sliced 2-3 bird’s eye chilis sliced 2 tablespoons chopped cilantro Yield: about 4 servings Method: 1. Make the marinade: Roast the coriander and cumin seeds in a sauté pan until they become aromatic. 2. Use a mortar and pestle or spice grinder to make a powder. In the mortar and pestle or in a blender make a paste form the ground spices, lemongrass, galangal, and a pinch of salt. Add other powdered ingredients and mix well. 3. Add the coconut cream, oil, and sugar. 4. Cut the pork into strips that will fit on the skewers that will be used and add to the marinade. The pork should marinate for at least an hour but will be better if left overnight in the refrigerator. 5. The skewers should be soaked in water for at least 30 minutes in water but will benefit from and overnight soak. This keeps the skewers from burning when on the grill. Note: the pork skewers should be cooked over a medium heat. 6. Make the sauce: If desired remove the seeds from the chilis before preparing the sauce. 7. Soak the chilis in water for about 15 minutes or until soft. 8. Toast the coriander and cumin seeds in a sauté pan until they become aromatic and grind to a powder. 9. Using a mortar and pestle or in a blender make a paste of the lemon grass, galangal, kaffir lime zest, shallots, garlic, and coriander roots; blend or mash each ingredient separately and add to the ground spices. 10. Heat 1 cup of the coconut cream in a small sauce pan and add the spice paste and cook for a few minutes until it becomes aromatic; add the remainder of the coconut cream and the palm sugar and cook for a further 2 or 3 minutes. 11. Stir in the ground peanuts and cook at a simmer for 5 minutes before adding the coconut milk to which pandan extract or leaves have been added. 12. Season with fish sauce and chili powder. 13. Make the pickles: Slice all the vegetables. 14. Cook the vinegar, sugar, and salt with a ¼ cup of water until the sugar dissolves. 15. Let cool and add the other ingredients. Thanks for reading! 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Last time, I ended with the case against Asian Doughnut Theory No. 1. No, the Portuguese did *not* bring churros from China. Churros are *not* from China. Those sugar-laced delights had been around on the Iberian Peninsula for centuries. A Real Portuguese Legacy Having dispelled one food myth propagated by the media, it’s time to focus on the real Portuguese legacy . The biggest impact the Portuguese had on Asia? It’s not their delectable ports, their heavenly sardine pâté, or even egg custard tarts. It’s something even more implausible: The Portuguese helped make Asian food a lot more fiery. Next time you look at your kimchi, remember those sardine lovers. Kimchi, Picture & Food by Dr. Amy Hsin Chili Heaven (Picture by Juhn Ahn) ------ To see the connection between the Portuguese and kimchi, we will have to take a long and circuitous route through food history — not unlike the route navigated by sixteenth-century sailors. We begin our journey not in Asia, but in Southern Spain. In 1492, the Spanish crown had expelled the last of the Moorish rulers from the Iberian Peninsula. Embolden by this victory, the Spanish and their Portuguese neighbors began an aggressive phase of overseas expansion. As historian Sanjay Subrahmanyam explains in an important article, the Portuguese and Spanish worked well as a tag team. And from 1580-1640, they were formally one happy family. To see what effect the Iberian Union had on Asian food, just look at the map of their sixteenth- and seventeenth-century empire. Initially, the Portuguese focused on wrestling the spice trade away from the Muslims. They were also a main force behind the Atlantic slave trade. In Asia, they colonized Goa in Southern India, took over Malacca in Southeast Asia, and set up shop in Macau, off the coast of China. They also maintained a friendly trading and missionary presence in Japan until 1639, when they got the boot (more on that next week). Portugese in Nagasaki (Picture by Leanne Martin) Portuguese in Nagasaki (Picture by Leanne Martin) While the Portuguese were busy making trouble in the Indian Ocean and building an empire in Brazil, their Spanish brothers were spreading death and devastation in the Americas. By 1521, Cortes and his squad had vanquished the mighty Aztec empire and murdered the last Aztec ruler, Montezuma. In the process, the Europeans decimated the native population, mostly with smallpox (which proved to be far deadlier than European weapons). Not content with leaving their stamp in the Americas, the Spanish worked on getting their own foothold in Asia. So they conquered the Philippines in the 1560s. The Philippines proved to be particularly important to the Iberian takeover. The Spanish realized that they could ship silver, people, and plants from their colonies in the Americas to their colonies in Asia. That route became the Acapulco-Manila galleon. ----- Chili peppers were on those galleons. The Spanish learned about chili peppers -- which lends dishes a touch of heat -- from the Aztecs. The chili pepper was one of a long list of new crops and foods that the Spanish and Portuguese encountered in the Americas (see Alfred Crosby’s table in your reading). This transfer of plants, animals, and disease, is known as the Columbian Exchange. Count the New World Ingredients (Oct 2017) Because of Iberian global expansion, the Columbian Exchange also affected how everyday meals in Asia tasted. By the end of the sixteenth century, Aztec chili peppers began displacing the native black pepper in piquant dishes in the Indian Subcontinent. Southeast Asian cooking also felt the difference. So did coastal China and ultimately southern Japan. This, however, leaves Korea. Invasions are key once more, or so Professor Ahn tells me. But here, we are dealing with something other than the usual suspects. Unlike other parts of Asia, Korea did not face an active threat from the Spanish or Portuguese navy. Instead, they found themselves fending off another invader: Japan. In 1592, Japanese strong man Toyotomi Hideoyshi (1537-1598) got it in his head to conquer Korea and launched a series of expeditions. Long story short: the invasion fell through. Six years into the expedition, Hideoyshi kicked the bucket, and the Japanese retreated. But before that happened, the Japanese had introduced the Koreans to a few American crops from their European imperialist pals: corn, sweet potato, and chili. This is where kimchi entered the story. At first, Korean cooks did not know quite what to make of the chili. They certainly were in no hurry to add it to their veggies. One of earliest Korean sources that mention the pepper, dating to 1614, expressed suspicion. It referred to the new chili peppers as a “Southern barbarian pepper.“ It also accused the colorful Capsicum of being poisonous. It would take some time before cooks got adventurous in Korea. As late as 1670 , rich home cooks stuck to preparing their pickled vegetables in the old manner. This meant pickling vegetables in brine. Think water or white kimchi. By the eighteenth century, the status of the Mexican chili pepper had changed in Korea. Books like Farming Management (Sallim gyeongje ; 山林經濟 ) reveals that peasants used chili pepper to make a sauce akin to gojuchang. It’s name? Barbarian pepper sauce. The chili also found its way into pickled vegetables: seaweed, pumpkins, cucumbers. Oddly not cabbage — that would come later. Daikon Kimchi (Picture by Juhn Ahn) More Side Dishes (Picture by Juhn Ahn) Jars of Kimchi (Picture by Juhn Ahn) Kimchi in Progress (Picture by Dr. Amy Hsin) The chili peppers were also not alone in securing a spot at the Korean table. Farming Management also featured two American crops: corn and sweet potatoes. The latter is now responsible for two other crowning achievements of Korean cuisine. Sweet-potato vermicelli ( j apchae ) and soju (distilled liquor). Sweet potato fritters (from close to the Korean border) ------ So why did people in Asia accept these unfamiliar foodstuffs? In the case of kimchi, it was not because the Koreans thought highly of Iberians. The archaic name for chili pepper, Southern Barbarian pepper (南蛮椒), should be a tip off. At the end of the day, the embrace of American foodstuffs came down to matters of survival and starvation. Chili peppers and sweet potatoes are high-yield crops. They grow easily on marginal lands and offer their consumers vital nutrients. Think of all the Vitamin C packed into a chili pepper. The nutrient probably prevented scurvy in mestizo and indigenous American crew members , stuck on the long ocean journeys that connected Acapulco to Manila. Unlike black peppers, which were traded as luxury products in the premodern world, chilis were also cheap sources of vitamins. Chilis also work wonders for the fermentation process. Not only can you make kimchi with chilis, but also yogurt ("curd"). Not surprisingly, people in early modern India referred to chili peppers as the “savior of the poor.” Packed with carbohydrates and nutrients, sweet potatoes are also a sensible food, particularly for poor Chinese and Koreans. Sweet potato vines grow well on hills, where the soil tends to be too rocky and thin to produce rice, wheat, or millet. In the premodern world, poor people often found themselves pushed into the highlands (hence the colloquial term ‘hill billies’). For poor people, these American plants thus represented the difference between life and death. ----- At the end of the day, the story of kimchi, from the Americas to Nagasaki to Korea, brings to mind an old and outmoded adage, “No man is an island.” To this, I would probably add the following mantra: “No cuisine is an island.” All of us have been affected by the historic flows of ingredients and the circulation of cooking styles across continents. Our meals are time capsules of those flows. And kimchi is no exception: a lot of human history (and flavor) is loaded into your cabbage and daikon. As you unscrew your jars of kimchi and inhale the scent, think about the first Korean cultivators, who gambled on a frightening foreign chili vine. Then take a bite of the daikon and imagine the Japanese navy. Chomp a bit more on the cabbage leaves and picture those ships crossing the Pacific and the native crew members who mixed chili peppers into their corn meal, or masa . As the spices tickle your tongue, remember the Portuguese and Spaniards, who left the Iberian peninsula in search of Indian pepper and incredible power. As the spices overwhelm your palate, don’t forget poor Emperor Montezuma. Before the Spanish took away his empire, he once enjoyed his chili with cocoa. Kimchi lover? Chili pepper fanatic? Have a hot recipe you would like to share? See ya on Yellow Dig! Sources (not hyperlinked) Anderson, EN (2014). Food and Environment in Early and Medieval China . Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Lizzie Collingham, Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), Chapter 3: “Vindaloo: The Portuguese and the Chilli Pepper,” 47-80. Alfred W. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1972), “Chapter 5, “New World Foods and Old Word Demography,” 165-202. Brian R. Dott .The Chili Pepper in China (New York: Columbia University Press, 2020). Sanjay Subrahmanyam, "Holding the World in Balance: The Connected Histories of the Iberian Overseas Empires, 1500-1640." The American Historical Review 112. 5 (2007): 1359-1385. Further reading: Rachel Laudan and Jeffrey Pilcher, "Chili, Chocolate, and Race in New Spain: Glancing Backward to Spain or Looking Forward to Mexico." In Eighteenth-Century Life: The Cultural Topography of Food 23.2 (1999): 59-70. Kimchi Recipe by Evan Straub. In Winter 2018, my students made kimchi with Dr. Evan Straub, a fermentation expert. I also joined along for the fun and the glamor shots with a hair net. Here is the recipe that we used. If you are vegan and unable to eat fish, there are vegan versions , too. INGREDIENTS 1 napa cabbage 1/2 cup salt 1/2 - 1/3 cup gochugaru-Korean red pepper flakes 1 tablespoon sugar 2 tablespoons minced garlic 4 carrots 2/3 daikon radish 2 tablespoons minced ginger 1/3 cup chopped green onion 1/4 cup fish sauce DIRECTIONS 1. Wash cabbage and cut into quarters. Place in a very large bowl (you'll need this for the rest of the process). If you need your kimchi to pickle faster, cut in smaller pieces. The smaller the pieces, the faster the process. 2. Evenly apply salt to cabbages. This will draw the moisture out and prepare it for pickling. Add water just to cover. Let sit at room temperature for 5 hours. 3. Cut off the ends of the cabbage quarters and throw them away. Then, cut cabbage quarters into bite-sized sections. Place sections in the large bowl. 4. Mash garlic, ginger and sugar into a fine paste (you can use a food processor). Add pepper and fish sauce and make a thick paste. You can adjust the amount of garlic, ginger and pepper based on your taste preferences. 5. Put gloves on and mix with your hands. The easiest and best way to mix kimchi is to push your hand all the way to the bottom of the bowl and fold the kimchi over on itself. Then, rub the top layer to better distribute the spices. Do this until the kimchi is sufficiently mixed. 6. Take handfuls of kimchi and place in an airtight container. After each handful, press down firmly to pack it into the jar. Liquid should start to cover the kimchi. 7. Once you've removed all of the kimchi from the large bowl, add a splash of water to wash all of the excess spices from the sides. Add the water to the container. This is so you don't waste any spices. If you've used multiple containers, distribute it evenly between containers. 8. Pack your kimchi down one final time and seal tightly. Let sit at room temperature for 1-2 days before moving to a fridge. The kimchi will last several months. Fermentation (bubbly) is good! Mold is furry and not good! Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. https://thecuriouseater.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page

A few months ago, I awoke to find it there. On my Facebook feed. “Hey Conejita! Thought of you when I saw this.” I groaned. It was the same darn story, “ The Secret History of Churros ” from 2011, but by another writer and with a slightly different name, “ How Spanish Chefs Stole Chinese Dough and Turned Churros into a Classic Dessert .” In a nutshell, the claim: Churros are from China. Or, to quote one of the earliest versions, “ The history of the churro is ancient and revered, lending the snack an almost mythical status. It begins not in Spain but in China, where Portuguese merchants first tasted youtiao, strips of golden fried salty pastry traditionally eaten for breakfast .” It's an intriguing theory (sigh). But there are more problems with it than its claims of historical connection. The theory exposes larger issues about how we write those histories: namely, who we feature in our tales of culinary exchange and who we leave out. ----- Since the theory is now ubiquitous, let’s give it a hearing. For the sake of convenience, I’ll refer to it as Asian Doughnut Theory no. 1 (you’ll review Asian Doughnut Theory no. 2 in discussion sections on Friday). To be sure, Asian Doughnut Theory no. 1 is right about at least one thing. There is a family resemblance between youtiao and churros. Both are long doughs that end up deep-fried into golden goodness. Both are best when dipped. In the case of youtiao , it nowadays finds a home in soy milk (a few hundred years ago, that would have been drinkable yogurt ). In the case of churros , you first coat the fritter in cinnamon sugar, then dunk it in chocolate. So let’s pretend that the family resemblance points to an actual genealogical tie, as opposed to a spurious connection . Picture Zooey Deschanel and Katie Perry . To me, they look identical. But should we infer on the basis of their uncanny physical resemblance that they are directly related? To test the Asian Doughnut Theory, we’ll need to flesh out some dates. Presumably, that transfer of doughnut-making technology happened sometime after the end of the fifteenth century. Why start looking after 1500? It was only then that the Portuguese, who became Europe’s finest navigators, accessed the Indian Ocean Trade Route . The Portuguese were latecomers to the game. By the time they made their way to Asia, that trade route had been operational for more than a millennium. Part of the challenge had been the seas themselves. Those monsoon patterns require considerable skill to manage and can be treacherous. Also, if you leave from Europe and want to bypass the Middle East, you must take the long route and navigate around the tip of Africa. Needless to say, the Portuguese, like the Spanish, were eager to pull off these feats. The Portuguese wanted “in” with the Spice Trade. As Paul Freedman reveals in Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination (2008), this was not because the Europeans needed to preserve their rotting, unrefrigerated meat. Spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves are absolutely useless for this purpose. It was simply for the taste — and the prestige. The sixteenth century was the Portuguese moment. While the Portuguese didn’t manage to completely control the Indian Ocean Trade Route, they did get a foothold in Asia. They captured Goa in Southern India by 1510, then took over Malacca the next year. At that point, the Portuguese established a presence in Siam , before heading due north: to the Southern Japanese port city of Nagasaki in 1543 and then leased Macau off the coast of China in 1557. Japanese Depiction of the Arrival of the Portuguese (Photo by Leanne Martin) According to the Asian Doughnut Theory, Portuguese merchants must have learned how to prepare youtiao from the Chinese and brought the techniques back to the Iberian peninsula. From there, the techniques for making doughnuts presumably evolved -- and significantly. Cooks began preparing the dough by adding boiling water to make something similar to a choux . Then they started piping the dough out of something like a pastry bag into hot oil. After the fritters were done, they coated them in spiced sugar. In this cloying, mutated form, the fritter boarded ships headed to the Americas, much of which was then either a Spanish or Portuguese colony. A Mexican favorite was born! ----- Looking at the facts, you can see why the Asian Doughnut Theory has enjoyed staying power. It’s a cool story, gels with historical events, and accounts for the apparent resemblance between youtiao and churros. But Asian Doughnut Theory no. 1 falls short of making a persuasive case on several fronts. For starters, no one has ever coughed up a shred of textual support. I have yet to see some sixteenth or seventeenth-century European quoted as claiming that churros “ came from alien lands .” Nor are there any of the usual smoking guns. Journalists have yet to point to any loan words that suggest a historical instance of pastry lifting. More troubling, Asian Doughnut Theory No. 1 has ignored a more obvious source of the churros: a handy Islamic predecessor. Today, there are some similar-looking fritters, still consumed throughout North Africa. One of them goes by khringo . It’s also made in coiled rings, just like it is today in Southern Spain, where churros are called a bunch of things including: Calentitos de rueda or calentitos de papas. More tellingly still, there’s also a variant of another popular treat in Algeria called the banana zlabia (or zlabiat ). Some versions have eggs ; others don’t . But the main thing is this. It’s a hot-water dough. It’s also piped and then deep fried, then dunked in something syrupy. Zlabia banane (from hotwater dough to deep frying to post syrup glazing; Feb 16, 2021) It’s clear that some version of zlabia has been around on the Iberian peninsula for centuries. The eminent scholar Charles Perry recently released his translation of a cookbook from thirteenth-century Andalusia (Southern Spain). That cookbook predates European exploration by hundreds of years. The cookbook also dates to a time when Southern Spain was under the rule of Muslim North Africans. So it makes sense that it was written in Arabic. The book also contains a recipe for a fritter called Zulâbiyya — a Persian treat that had been popular throughout the Islamic world by the thirteenth century for hundreds of years. This was also a treat that had legs. There’s a version of it today in India; it goes by jalebi . The process conveyed in the thirteenth-century cookbook is very close to the modern churros and to Algerian zlabia ( zlabia is the North African rendering of zulabia ). There’s piping and deep frying. But there *is* one difference: the thirteenth-century Spanish version did not involve a hot water dough. I don’t think this breaks the theory, however. There have always been many versions of zulabia , including a tenth-century one from Baghdad made with hot water dough. Judging from the way banana zlabia are still made, those versions clearly found their way first to North Africa and presumably on to Spain. Besides, the legacies of Muslim rule in Iberian cuisine survive until this day — not only in Spain and Portugal, but in former Iberian colonies. You not only see it with the churros, but also in sopa de fideos , rice pilaf like the paella, deep-fried fritters, and a slew of confections like mazapanes . Fish-and-chips is also a legacy of that era. Historians believe that it was brought to England by Spanish Jews, who had lived in Andalusia before the Inquisition. If you’re curious, check out the recipe for Munashshâ, a Dish Made with Starch . Souvenirs of Islamic Rule in Southern Spain (Cordoba, Seville, Granada, Dec 2014) ----- I tell this story *not* to discourage journalists from doing food history. At the end of the day, I don’t mind that they speculate or come up with wild theories. We historians also speculate, in our mealy-mouthed way. Instead, I relate this history to make two bigger points. Beware of what you find on the Internet! Food journalism often makes larger assumptions about culinary flows. I see in the Asian Doughnut Theory residual traces of Eurocentrism. I know that sounds weird, since this theory challenges the presumed European roots of churros. While the Asian Doughnut Theory is purportedly a story of global connection, it is still one starring Western Europeans: Western European navigators who braved unknown waters to explore the far reaches of the earth and bring back culinary delights of the East; and Western Europeans who are the sole point of connection, the vanguards of international trade and globalization. Not surprisingly, this narrative has led some to affirm European priority. The latest BBC version of the story insists that the churros is descended from Classical Greek pastry. Roman Ruins (Cordoba, Dec 2014) To be sure, there’s nothing wrong with talking about European actors or Classical Greek precedents. Sixteenth-century Portuguese did have a huge effect on Asian eating. We’ll see this, in fact, next week. For now, just remember the egg custard tart! Macau (Nov 2017) and Egg Custard Tarts (Jan 2011) But it’s one thing to talk about European culinary influence and another to overlook everyone else. Long before Europeans headed East (or West) in search of spices, Malays, Indians, Near Easterners, Africans, and East Asians transported faiths, cooking styles, and spices across vast expanses of space through the Indian Ocean Trade Route and Silk Road. To me, the cinnamon sugar in the churros should have been a tip off that there was Islamic influence. But these premodern trade routes did more than move aromatics. Foods like dumplings, biryani , samosa, flat bread, and zulabia are reminders of those deep historical connections. It behooves us to be mindful of those non-European explorers and traders. We must remain on the lookout for their traces in our food. In many cases, those traces are often right under our noses. Empanadas made with filo (Seville, Dec 2014) Sources (not hyperlinked) Gary Paul Nabhan, Cumin, Camels, and Caravans: A Spice Odyssey (California, 2014). Charles Perry, Scents and Flavors: A Syrian Cookbook (New York University Press, 2017). Randy Schwartz, " Luqmat al-Qadi: The Morsel that Went to the Ends of the Earth ," Repast 2009. Sami Zubaida, " Circuits of Food and Cuisine ," in Asef Bayat and Linda Herrera eds., Global Middle East: Into the Twenty-First Century (California, 2021). 119-32. Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. https://thecuriouseater.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page